Heart Stops Beating
by Dyani
Summary: Boq escapes from the Governor’s mansion with Elphaba’s help, and goes to the Emerald City to find Glinda. But tensions between Animals and humans are rising there despite Glinda’s best efforts, and Boq is swept up in the repercussions. Postmusicalverse AU
1. Prologue

Notes: Hello. :D This story is about Boq. And also about the repercussions of the events of the end of the musical, and Glinda's struggle to live up to Elphaba's example while trying to stay within the constraints of her role as a leader and public figure, and the political climate of Oz in the wake of the Wizard's departure… but actually it's mostly about Boq and how he deals with all of that. It's also slightly AU, mostly postmusical (with a little bit of rewriting/shuffling of the events of the ending), with a lot of influence from the _Wicked_ novel and a little from the original _Wizard of Oz_ book. It's gonna be pretty long, too. This is just the prologue. I hope that you like it?

Disclaimer: Gregory Maguire owns Wicked, and I don't. D:

* * *

As if finding the infamous Wicked Witch of the West in the Governor's private chamber wasn't disorienting enough for one morning, as if it wasn't hard enough to process her disarming lack of malice (she seemed more like regular old Elphaba than like a dangerous criminal) Nessa, now, could _walk_. There was no excuse – no rational excuse, then – for her to continue requiring his services. Who would have ever thought that the Wicked Witch of the West might be the one to restore his freedom? But if he'd really had a hope that a change in circumstances would bring about a change of mind, it was quickly dashed. There was no rational reason to keep him anymore, but as the tyrannical Governor of Munchkinland, Nessarose had no need to resort to rationality.

Boq liked to think that he had learned enough since leaving home to outgrow the superstitions of a provincial childhood. He didn't believe in ha'nts or wraiths or any of the mythical spirits that made grown men and women of Rush Margins draw the curtains and clutch homemade warding charms fearfully on stormy nights. He knew it was just sorcery that was giving her the power to walk – skillful magic, the Wicked Witch's magic, but plain and simple sorcery all the same. But when Nessa straightened up to her full height and glared down at him, her eyes burning with desperation, staggering unsteadily toward him on legs that were never meant to hold her weight – it was such an unnerving, _unnatural_ sight that all of his reasoning faltered and he found himself taking an instinctive step back.

"You can't leave," Nessa told him. "Just because I can walk doesn't mean I don't need you now."

"Nessa, let him go," the Witch – Elphaba – said, calmly.

Nessa turned to her sister and hissed, "This is none of your concern."

Boq tried to act as controlled as Elphaba seemed to be, but his hands were shaking and he was sure his voice was, too. "I _am_ leaving, and don't try to stop me," he said, and though he had begun speaking in anger, the words quickly turned into a plea for understanding. "There's never been any point in keeping me here. You must see that. You could control my every move for the rest of my life, but you can't force me to feel for you the way you do for me."

For a moment Nessa seemed to shrink down again, and she hid her face in her hands. She was still so _young_, Boq thought with sudden, guilty clarity, no matter how much she had hardened and grown cold in the time since her father's death. It had only been three years. What had happened to the eager, sweet young girl she had been? As gently as he could, he said, "Nessa, I lost my heart to Glinda the moment I first saw her. You know that."

He may as well have struck her. She recoiled and stared back at him with a fury that was somehow both incredulous and resigned.

He had endured Nessa's anger before, but it had been a cold anger, unpleasant without being truly threatening. This was something different, something frightening.

"Is that so," she said through clenched teeth. "Do you think that I will just allow you to walk out of here – that I will not do everything in my power to stop you from leaving me?"

"You've done everything in your power already, Nessa, and it hasn't deterred him one bit," Elphaba said. "He's leaving. You won't keep him." Despite her confident tone, she moved to stand between them, warily. Boq couldn't understand why she, of all people, seemed to be siding with him against Nessa, but he felt a strange rush of gratitude toward her even so.

"'Lost your heart'!" Nessa echoed his own words with a bitter laugh. "To Glinda? She doesn't want you. She never did." She turned away, and for a moment Boq dared to hope that she had given in. She went on in a dangerously quiet voice. "_I_ wanted you, and I'll do whatever it takes to keep you." Her eyes trailed over to the ancient-looking spellbook that lay open on the floor.

But Boq hardly had time to wonder what she was up to before Elphaba started toward her sister in sudden dismay. "You know better than that," she growled, and when she leaned in and snatched the book away Boq let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Was he mistaken, or had Nessa really been planning to resort to magic to stop him from leaving? The thought was so chilling that he was sure he must be wrong – was she that desperate? Could she possibly be that possessive of her claim on him? But that certainly seemed to be the conclusion Elphaba had reached, as she stood and placed the book safely in a bag slung over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she said to Nessarose, without emotion. Nessa didn't look up, didn't move. Slowly she sank to the floor, staring at the empty spot where the book had been, her fists clenched.

Boq watched her through narrowed eyes, fighting down a reflexive wave of disgust and an even stronger sense of pity. He resented her with all his will for what she had done to him and to his homeland, and he didn't regret having hurt her if it meant breaking her hold on both; but all the same, he couldn't find it in himself to revel in the breaking.

Elphaba startled him by clapping a hand down on his shoulder. "If you were planning on leaving, now would be a good time."

"Oh," he said, blankly. "Yes, but I'm going to need – oh."

"What? What are you doing?"

Looking wildly around the dim, musty room, he answered distractedly, "I need a pass, a traveling pass. Everyone – every Munchkin – needs to get one signed by the Governor before they can travel anywhere within the borders of Munchkinland. Otherwise the Guards can stop you on the road or detain you as they see fit."

Elphaba turned a slightly paler shade of green and glanced at Nessa, still kneeling with her back to them. "The _Wizard's_ Guards? In Munchkinland?"

But Boq had stopped listening. He turned around a few more times, as if in a dream, before remembering in which drawer of which desk the passes were kept, and dashing toward it. Nessa had made sure he knew exactly where they were, and had made doubly sure he knew that he would never have a chance to use one. Well, here they were, and here he was, and this was his chance.

As he approached Nessa with the blank pass clutched tightly in both hands, he saw that Elphaba had knelt beside her sister and was speaking to her. He didn't catch the words, but he saw Nessa's delicate frame shake with suppressed sobs, and when he anxiously handed her the paper and a quill, she signed it without argument – without even looking up at him – and handed it back. Elphaba whispered something soothing to her, but she only moaned in response. It was a visceral expression of the pain of abandonment that she had delayed as long as she could. She had made the same sound back at Shiz when she had learned that Elphaba had really left her, and again when her father died. But this time, Boq realized uneasily, he would not be there to look after her. He shuddered involuntarily and looked away.

"Just a moment, I'll see you off," Elphaba told him. With a last comforting touch of Nessa's arm, she stood and led Boq quickly to the door of the room – her demeanor changed, all brisk and businesslike.

"Why did you – ?" he began before he could stop himself, then babbled, "I mean, thank you for helping me, Miss Elphaba, but you're, well..."

"A criminal?" she prompted, wryly. "I know we weren't exactly the best of friends at Shiz, but honestly, I thought you at least had more sense than that." The Witch smiled down at him, not entirely kindly. "Half the things they say about me aren't even _possible_, let alone true."

"Well," he said, and trailed off. He had no doubt that she had been a decent person when he had known her, and he was willing to believe that some of what she had done since then had been twisted in the telling to make it seem worse than it was, or that it had been done out of misguided conviction, even. She had always been opinionated and willing to fight for her ideals. But even if half of the stories were complete fabrications– even the _worst_ half – that still left an awful lot of unscrupulous acts unaccounted for. He felt it best to equivocate in the name of safety. In a conciliatory tone, he offered, "I knew the part about you having an extra eye was wrong, at least. I think I'd have noticed it before."

For a moment Elphaba only glared at him, and he had a fleeting notion that joking now may have been a bad idea. But before he could begin to fear for his health, Elphaba broke into a truly wicked grin. "I take it back, then. You do have _some_ sense," she said. "Go on, you're free to go anywhere you like now, right?"

He tried to speak, stopped, tried again, and finally managed, "I did what I could for her, you know."

The smile faded so quickly from Elphaba's face and she regarded him so stonily that it suddenly took all his courage just to stand before her without shrinking back. Neither of them looked at Nessarose, sitting stiffly ruined and broken in the middle of the room, but she seemed to sense their thoughts on her anyway.

"You're going to wish you'd stayed," Nessa told Boq raggedly. "Glinda is going to marry Fiyero. She has no use for you."

Keeping his eyes on Elphaba, Boq spoke quietly. "Goodbye, Nessa. Please be well. And goodbye to you, Miss Elphaba," he said, bowing deeply. "Thank you for your help." And he turned to go.

"Boq," Elphaba called after him, almost apologetically. "If you see Glinda before I do, congratulate her for me. Tell her that I… that I hope she's happy."

He stopped and looked back through the doorway, but Elphaba had already turned to go back to Nessa's side. "I'll tell her," Boq promised, wondering, and he left the room, left Colwen Grounds to whoever would have it, left both Witches for the last time.


	2. Chapter 1

Notes: Oh hello! Thanks so much for the reviews, they are really encouraging:D Also I forgot to mention and thank my two awesome proofreaders who are, incidentally, awesome, and who listen to me whine about my silly writings without even hitting me too much (unless I ask them to, for motivation!). Did I mention that they are _awesome_??  
Also, too; I'm gonna go ahead and tentatively call this fic Boq/Glinda, in case you were curious.

* * *

It was getting dark by the time he dragged into the village where he had been born. Several days' walking had brought him this far. He was hot and thirsty and sore, with dust clinging all about his feet and legs and his spectacles sliding down his nose, and far too exhausted to notice or care that the farmers in the fields he staggered past were staring at him and whispering.

The countryside was supposed to be patrolled by Guards, but he hadn't seen any. Probably many of them had been recalled to the Emerald City for the engagement ball. He shouldn't have had any problems even if he had run into a guard post, with a proper traveling pass in his pocket, although he had heard stories about the Guards harassing even legitimate travelers out of boredom, or bigotry, or whatever it was.

Boq had not been out on his own in almost three years, if the courtyard of the mansion didn't count – and he did not count it, because even though he could see the sky there, he was still surrounded on all sides by the walls of that hateful, stifling place. And although he had been kept busy dashing from this room to that, up stairs and down, fetching things and running errands, it wasn't the same as proper exercise, he had realized. In all of his life, working in the fields with his father since he was old enough to march along behind him carrying a bag of seed or an armful of tools, he could not think of another time he had been this tired. Couldn't think very well at all, actually, but that didn't matter now, he was _home_.

His father's farm, one of the more successful ones in this hardscrabble place, was beyond all the others on the outskirts of the village, and as he approached it he recognized his father, Bfee, and two of his brothers gathered in front of the farmhouse, unhitching a Munchkinlander pony from a wagon, their day's work done. His throat, dry anyway from lack of water, clenched so at the sight that he was unable to call out, but as he got closer they looked up one by one and noticed him.

"What business do you have, young master? I don't think we know you." Boq's father peered at him through the growing darkness, but his brothers, Kievan and Elikh, stared, stricken, as though he had just risen up suddenly out of the ground.

"It's me, dad," Boq rasped.

Bfee stared. Kievan made a feeble warding sign, as if confronted with an evil spirit. Elikh asked, hopefully, "Boq?"

"Mercy from the Unnamed God," Bfee whispered. He still didn't move. "I don't believe it. Boq? It _is_ you?"

"Of course it's me. Who else?" Having made it this far, all Boq wanted was to have a drink and then sleep for a good long while, and this confusion wasn't helping. "Can we go inside now?" He almost lost his balance and all three made a move at once to steady him, but Bfee caught him first.

"Kievan, Elikh, you finish up out here," he said. Through a haze of exhaustion Boq was just aware enough to notice the fact that his father's voice was shaking. That was unusual. "I'll take Boq inside. Your mother will want to know her son is alive."

So he was led into the house, forced to sit down and given a drink of water. His siblings all crowded around to see him and stare, but no one knew quite what to say or do when faced with someone they had thought was dead, except for his mother, Laelia, who wrung his hand in hers and cried silently until he felt profoundly uncomfortable.

"Where have you been?" they all asked. "Why didn't you write?"

"I tried," was all he could say.

They told him that the last letter they had received from him, three years ago, had been a hastily-scribbled note saying that he was escorting a friend home to visit her ailing father. After that, as far as they or anyone outside Colwen Grounds knew, he had vanished completely. They had waited and wondered, sent letters to the school and gotten infuriatingly unhelpful replies, suspected foul play, and finally despaired of ever seeing him again.

He listened to all this, dully, too tired to react; someone must have realized it, because he was dimly aware of being led to another room and collapsing into bed, filthy clothes and all, before falling blissfully asleep.

* * *

Slowly he became aware of a conversation between two of his sisters, who were hurrying around the bedroom and whispering over him in too-loud voices. Surely it wasn't morning yet, he'd hardly even slept at all, had he? But curtains were drawn back and sunlight seemed to burn through Boq's eyelids. He tried to resist the return to awareness, but no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, the persistent reality of the waking world gnawed at the edges of his mind. He wasn't ready to wake up yet, there was too much to think about, too much to deal with… if he could just go back to sleep and put it off a little longer…

"Oh, Abbey, will you look at this, the entire bed needs cleaning now."

"Of course it does. And he'll need a bath and a change of clothes. And a few good meals, too, see how pale he is, poor thing…"

"Someone really ought to have changed his clothes before they put him to bed. No wonder the boys all slept on the floor last night, and woke up cranky." There was a pause; something partly blocked the light streaming in from the window, and the voice continued from much closer. "Goodness, look at him. He looks like a half-drowned sheep dragged a mile through the dirt. If I had a pair of scissors I'd cut his hair right now before he wakes up…"

"Now, there's no need to pick on him just because you're feeling put upon."

"Those were unrelated observations. Don't scold, you know he can't hear me anyway."

Exasperated and finally giving up on getting any more sleep, Boq pulled a pillow over his face and growled into it, sleepily. "_Wrong_, Norin."

"Oh!" Undaunted, Norin snatched the pillow away from him, holding it by one corner as if it were contaminated. "Have you been eavesdropping?"

"It's not eavesdropping when you're standing right next to me." Blinking in the light, he glared up at her, but any real annoyance he might have felt vanished in an instant.

Abbey and Norin were his older sisters, complete opposites but nearly inseparable. They were both wearing the very modest plain dress that Munchkinlander girls were known for, but Norin had her pretty brown hair done up in a modern style such as he had seen worn by fashionable girls at Shiz, while Abbey tied hers back with a simple ribbon only to keep it out of her eyes. They looked older than he remembered; of course on some level he had expected that, but he hadn't been prepared for the degree of change. Maybe he should have been. More than five years had passed since he had last seen them – when he went away to school. How much had to have happened since then, it occurred to him uneasily; how much he must have missed – and not only here within his family, but in the rest of Oz. He knew nothing but what Nessa chose to tell him, and that was mainly what he least wanted to hear… But that was another thought he was not ready to deal with just yet.

Abbey sat gingerly on the edge of the bed as he struggled to sit up, every muscle protesting, feeling even sorer than he had yesterday. "We're all very glad to have you back, little brother," she said, and put a hand on his arm, almost questioningly. Worried about him. How strange it must be to have a dead person show up on your doorstep out of nowhere, apparently alive and well. In the face of her concerned expression, he had to force a smile.

Sulking at being suddenly ignored, Norin pulled Abbey to her feet. "Our brother is sorely in need of washing, and we are distracting him. Are we going to make you something to eat, Boq, or do you think you'll be spending the rest of the day laying about? It's nearly noon, you know, you might as well waste the whole day as waste half of it –"

Abbey shot him an apologetic look. "You ought to hurry if you can. Mama won't relax until she sees you up and about again, she's been wandering around in a daze all morning. I think she still doesn't quite believe you're back…" She hesitated, as if she had more to say, but Norin took that opportunity to drag her out of the room and towards the kitchen. The prospect of food was enticement enough to force Boq to crawl painfully out of bed and wash up as best he could. Clean and with a change of clothes borrowed from one of his brothers, he began to feel a bit better, and steeled himself to venture into the kitchen again.

The house was mostly quiet. His father and brothers had undoubtedly been working in the field since dawn and wouldn't be back until dusk, and he didn't know where his younger sister was. On the table was a small pile of neatly-folded clothes, and his mother sat mending a hole on a shirt sleeve, in an absent sort of way. When she noticed him watching, tears sprung to her eyes at once and she rose to her feet with noticeable difficulty. He gave her a shaky smile and accepted her embrace, feeling awkward and hating it.

"My poor boy," she murmured. "Are you all right? Did you sleep? You were so tired last night I had Elikh put you to bed, you didn't hear a thing we were saying to you, I worried all morning when you didn't get up – "

"Mama, I'm fine," he said evenly. "I'm going to sit here at the table with you and eat. Is that all right?"

"Of course it is. Sit here, where I can see you." She pushed the pile of clothes to be mended to the other end of the table, and sat down in the chair beside him, wincing. Boq noticed it, uneasily; could she really have aged that much since he had last seen her? Abbey had been about to tell him something before Norin interrupted her; maybe she had meant to prepare him for it.

"I'm sorry you were worried," he said, impulsively, and took his mother's hand in his. "I'm sorry you – I'm sorry that I was gone for so long." _I'm sorry you all believed I was dead_, he thought, but that went without saying. "I did try to write you. If there had been a way to let you know I was all right – "

"I know," she said simply.

The afternoon passed quietly. The men returned from the field briefly to eat lunch (Boq's youngest brother Farran made a point to shake his hand, which was somewhat mystifying) and then went out again. Little Elinna returned from her trip down to the lake with a string of fish for dinner, smiling shyly at Boq but responding as briefly as possible to his attempts at conversation. She had been only seven years old when he left for school; now she was, what? Twelve, thirteen? He hardly recognized her, and he wouldn't have been surprised if she had forgotten all about him.

While their mother cleaned the fish for dinner and Abbey and Elinna assisted her, Norin offered – threatened, really – to cut his hair, and he was happy to accept. The only reason he had let it grow so long was because Nessa would not stop hinting that she would prefer it short, and the thought of having taken pleasure in such meaningless rebellion was almost embarrassing now.

Norin dragged him outside and was far too eager to pour a bucket of water over his head, just to straighten out his hair a bit, she said, but there was a mischievous glint in her eye.

"Don't worry," she told him, opening and closing a pair of scissors in the air experimentally, making sure they were sharp enough. "I've been practicing on Farran, and so far I've managed to leave both his ears intact."

"Comforting." He smiled, even though she was standing behind him and wouldn't see it.

"He's sort of taken after you, since – well, in your absence. When you disappeared, all of your possessions were sent back by the university, your books and papers and things. They seemed to think they were doing us a great favor, despite not being at great pains to find out where you had disappeared to…" She trailed off, disgusted. It was quiet for a moment, except for the sound of the scissors, busily snipping.

"Dad might have gotten rid of the books," she continued, "since they took up too much space – you know he's never really seen the use of books anyway – but Farran spoke up for them, and mama intervened too. So dad relented and we ended up stashing it all in boxes under the boys' bed. Abbey's idea. Farran absolutely treasures them."

"He kept everything?" Boq asked.

"As far as I know. Would you stop moving around so much?" She tugged on his hair irritably.

"Ow. Sorry." He tried to stop fidgeting. "What makes you say he's taken after me?"

"Reading at every opportunity, dreaming like there's no such thing as work, disappearing up trees all day until evening and making everyone think he wandered off and drowned in the lake…"

"That only happened _once_."

Norin made a sound of amused disbelief. "Anyway, if you want to reclaim any of your things, you might have to fight him for them. Just so you know."

* * *

It was strange, almost dreamlike, how quickly he was accepted back into the old routine. Everything, every_one_ had changed, but he seemed to be the only one who noticed. It was disconcerting.

Although they were clearly glad and amazed to have him back, it was strange to Boq how short-lived their curiosity was in exactly where he had been and why. Of course, he hadn't forgotten how much strength and mental energy it took to keep up a farm this size, so he supposed it wasn't surprising that his family wouldn't have much extra to spare for him. No matter what happened – no matter who died or came back from the dead – there was always work to be done to keep food on the table.

At dinner that first night they questioned him intensely. As soon as they had begun to understand what had happened – that the friend from school that he had been escorting home when he disappeared was now the Governor of Munchkinland, that he had spent all this time at Colwen Grounds – they grew quiet.

"You were a friend to the Wicked Witch of the East?" asked Farran.

"The – what?" Boq was confused for a moment, wondering how they had known about Elphaba without him having told them. But no… the Witch of the _East_? "Do you mean Nessa – the Governor?"

"Of course he means the Governor, don't play stupid," Kievan snapped. Bfee shot him a warning look, under which Kievan relented; still, Boq was shaken by the sudden tension around the table. Except for Elikh's (focused on resolutely arranging the food on his plate into even patterns before beginning to eat), all eyes were on him, concerned, perhaps even suspicious.

"That's what many of us have taken to calling her lately," Abbey explained.

"I would call her worse, but there are ladies and children present," Kievan said, bowing sportively to Elinna, who ducked her head shyly and pretended she hadn't noticed. "Her and her blighted travel restrictions, and her Guards getting the run of the countryside, poking around wherever they please, while she hides in that sprawling great mansion feeling superior to the like of us." He was nearly snarling. "At least her sister inflicts her witchery without bias, rich or poor – some of _her_ victims must deserve what they get, unlike us."

"Kievan!" Abbey scolded. "Don't speak that way over dinner, please!"

"I haven't really been in a position to hear her criticized so openly," said Boq carefully, as Kievan shot a fierce glare at Abbey, "but we certainly aren't friends."

Kievan wouldn't give up yet. "What were you doing working for her, then?"

"I was _not_," Boq growled, "working for her. I was not there willingly, if that's what you're all so worried about." And they did look relieved, somewhat.

He went on to explain, trying not to look as self-conscious as he felt, as much of the situation as he could bear to put into words. The very fact of having been made a servant was humiliating enough – they were poor and they were common, but Boq's family was fiercely proud of their independence – without having to mention that Nessa had been in love with him, or that he'd had a hand in convincing her of it, or, heaven forbid, that the Witch of the West was involved, too. Would they have even believed him?

"If she was so cruel, then why did she finally let you go?" his mother asked placidly. "Had a change of heart, did she?"

Boq nearly choked, but was saved from having to answer as Farran leaned forward eagerly. "I heard that she is hideously deformed, barely even human – is that true?"

"I heard that her travel restrictions were only made because she has no legs and resents those that can walk," Kievan muttered.

"And that she is deranged and sleeps in a bed lined with the pelts of cats she killed herself," Norin said.

"_You_ are deranged," Boq said, stunned. "Or whoever thought that up is deranged. I can't believe you would honestly think those things are true."

Norin frowned at him. "Well, there's no need to get so insulted. We were only having a conversation."

That was true, and Boq wasn't entirely sure himself why he found the rumors so disturbing, as ridiculous as they were. Nessa certainly wasn't going out of her way to be liked; most of her subjects had never even seen her. When someone in such a prominent position was so shrouded in mystery, her actions seemingly inexplicable, stories like this were bound to crop up. Perhaps without any regard to truth or plausibility.

When they had all finished eating and the ladies were busy cleaning up, Boq's father gave him a shrewd look and asked, casually, "You'll be joining us in the field tomorrow, I'm hoping?"

Boq opened his mouth intending to plead exhaustion and explain that he could use another day of rest after a somewhat harrowing last few days, but his brothers were waiting keenly for his response and what he found himself saying instead was "Of course."

Bfee didn't reply, but the merest flicker of pride in his expression was enough to convince Boq he had made the right choice.

* * *

When they returned the next day from planting, the men (sunburnt and stooped and dead tired from the work) found Elinna sobbing, distraught, and the other women gathered around her. Between trying to soothe her and looking awestruck themselves, they hardly acknowledged anyone at first, until they all gathered around Elinna in a half-circle, anxiously checking that she was all right.

"What happened?" growled Bfee.

"It's the Witch," Laelia said, pale but smiling. "The Wicked Witch is _dead_."

Boq was dimly surprised that no one seemed to notice his sharp intake of breath at the words, even in the stunned silence that fell after them. "Who – which one do you mean?" he asked, hearing his own calm voice strangely, as if from a distance.

Meeting his eyes from the other side of the circle, Abbey said, grimly, "Our Governor."

Kievan grinned fiercely. "You mean our _former_ Governor." He nudged the still-sniffling Elinna in an attempt to cheer her up. "Come on, moppet, what are you crying for? This is good news."

"Oh, don't tease her, the poor thing. She was there when it happened," Laelia murmured, smoothing Elinna's hair in sympathy.

"When _what_ happened?" Boq demanded, so sharply that even Elinna looked up at him in alarm. Before anyone could react, Abbey pulled him aside so that they could speak without being overheard.

"Are you all right?" she asked first.

"Yes." She frowned at him, disbelieving. "No, honestly, I'm fine," he muttered, "just shocked. What happened?"

"Elinna walked around to Stonespar End this morning to meet some friends. The Governor was there, she said, giving a speech – she doesn't know what about, Elinna doesn't, she says she wasn't listening – and a storm kicked up, of a sudden, out of nowhere, and…" Abbey hesitated, seeming to doubt the words even as she said them. "And then there was a cyclone, and it dropped a house right on the spot where the Governor was standing. I know it sounds impossible."

"Was it – was it some kind of sorcery, or…"

"Of course, it has to have been – Elinna insists there was a young girl inside the house when it landed, alive – a girl and her little dog," Abbey went on, helplessly. "Everyone assumed she was a witch. I don't know if it's true."

"It _is_ impossible," Boq said quietly, reeling. "A little girl? And crushed by a _house_… oh, Elinna, I wish she hadn't had to see it, I wish…" He found himself leaning heavily against the wall. What had Nessa been doing, going out among the commoners like that? Kievan had been right about that, at least; she had never wanted to associate with her subjects any more than she had to after her father's death. At first Boq had thought she was simply in mourning, but he later realized that she had never seemed at ease around the other servants, either; never seemed to know how to talk to them without falling to snapping out orders. So why the sudden change of heart?

"All right, Boq?" Elikh had edged up to him in his awkward way, concerned.

Without thinking, Boq nodded, and tried to gather himself back into the moment. Norin and Farran were sitting to either side of Elinna, making up some inane story to keep her from dissolving into tears again as Kievan tried animatedly to convince their parents that they should host a meal for the whole village to celebrate the Witch's death.

Boq took a deep breath, as if testing his resolve. _Was_ he all right? Nessarose had been killed, after all. Violently. Possibly murdered. It would be _right_ to be upset, wouldn't it?

No. It wasn't Nessa, it was the Governor of Munchkinland was dead, the terrible, unfeeling ruler, universally despised by her subjects. The selfish, spoiled girl who had kept him locked up like a disobedient pet that she could train, somehow, to love her. The Wicked Witch of the East, that's who was dead. There had been nothing left of Nessarose that was worth mourning, not for a long time; and so he would not mourn her now, he thought, with a decisiveness that did nothing to quell the sick feeling building in him.

* * *

Sure enough, in a few days the small house was full of the bedraggled inhabitants of Rush Margins, spilling out into the yard when it got too close inside, talking too loudly and eating too much and making exuberant toasts to the alien girl who had killed their despised Governor, and Boq had retreated to his room, pleading a headache. They had a right to celebrate and he had a right to be disgusted by the whole thing. He didn't want to think about it anymore, that was all.

He was trying hopelessly to fall asleep, with a pillow over his head to muffle the noise, when the door opened; he just barely kept from growling at whoever it was to go away before he heard Farran call, "Are you all right?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

He heard the door click shut. "Maybe we're just concerned. Why are you sulking all alone in a dark room?"

"Maybe I was sleeping."

"I doubt it," Farran retorted, but cheerfully. "Are you bored? Would you like something to read?"

Boq was up immediately, all pretense of sleep forgotten. "Yes!"

Grinning, Farran went around to the opposite side of the bed and knelt to pull out a wooden crate. "You might recognize these," he said, a little shyly, and handed Boq the top book in the pile.

It was his Ozian history textbook from his first year. He opened it to the middle, where the first page of the chapter on Munchkinland was still dog-eared to mark its place, torn between amusement and a vague disquieting feeling he couldn't quite decipher.

"Norin told me how you fought to keep these," he said. "Thank you for taking such good care of them."

"It was… well, I thought it was all we had left of you." Farran tried to laugh. "Certainly no one expected you to show up and reclaim them."

The strange feeling grew. Boq imagined the trunk full of books and papers being brought in, his mother broken all over again at the sight of it, his father gruffly throwing himself into work, barking orders at everyone over nothing, determined not to show how the loss had hurt him.

"You can keep them," he said hollowly. "I don't need them anymore." He closed the textbook hastily and handed it back.

Farran's eyes widened. "Thank you!" he said. "I mean, you're free to borrow them whenever you'd like, but… Oh, wait!" He began pulling other books out of the crate, searching for something. "I've always wondered, and now I can actually ask you – here." He drew out a bound notebook, the kind they had sold in the school store at Shiz, and flipped through it.

"Are you so desperate for reading material that you have to stoop to reading my homework as well?"

Farran nodded absently. "Homework's interesting when I'm not the one who has to do it. Ah, there it is." With a suspiciously eager grin he handed over the notebook and sat back to watch. Confused, Boq glanced from his brother to the page, read a few words, and promptly slammed the notebook shut, mortified.

"Ha!" Farran said delightedly. "You _did_ write them!"

"I did not," Boq choked, fighting a very powerful urge to hide. "I – I copied them out of a library book."

"Oh, I see. Was the book a collection of especially gawkish poetry?"

Boq forgot that he was trying to disclaim the writing and looked back at Farran plaintively. "_What_?"

"I'm only joking, some of it's not so bad," Farran said, although Boq distinctly got the feeling that he was just being polite. "Besides, I bet you could write much better now."

"Not really," Boq relented. "I haven't even tried since…" He gestured at the crate of schoolbooks vaguely.

"Lost your inspiration?"

Boq smiled to himself, wistfully. "You could say that."

"A girl?" Farran asked quietly.

Something in the tone of the question made Boq hesitate almost imperceptibly, but he decided to overlook it. "Yes."

Farran smiled ruefully and didn't press the matter. In truth he didn't seem that interested, which Boq was grateful for. He had been too preoccupied for the past week to think about what he intended to do – to think about _her_ – but now the half-formed plans and daydreamed possibilities began to whirl around in his thoughts once more.

* * *

Knowing his father as he did, Boq realized grimly that this was not likely to be a pleasant conversation, and it took him a few days of agonized indecision before he convinced himself that it would be best to get it over with. Whenever he tried to envision how it might go, his mind constructed elaborate scenes that somehow always ended in disaster. Of course it undoubtedly would, but it wasn't comforting to know that his own imagination had so little faith in him.

After dinner Boq sat up straighter and tried to sound stern. "Dad, there's something important I'd like to discuss with you."

Bfee tilted his head back appraisingly, but his expression was unreadable. "Well, then?"

Thrown off guard, failing utterly to hide it, Boq tried again. "W- couldn't we go somewhere… couldn't we speak in private?" The sounds of cleaning from the kitchen were subtly muffled as the girls all tried to listen in, and Kievan, Elikh and Farran were still sitting around the table, pointedly not watching, but obviously eager to hear what was so important.

With a nod Bfee dismissed them. Farran shot Boq an apprehensive look as he passed; behind him, Boq heard their bedroom door slam shut conspicuously as a sign that they could continue. It did nothing to convince him, since he knew from experience that they would be listening in under the door, anyway. Still, there was no point turning back now.

"I was hoping –" He took a deep breath. "I intend to go to the Emerald City, as soon as you can spare me."

"You are? And how are you thinking of paying for it?"

"I hoped that I could borrow some money, to be paid back after I find a job there, and –"

"Of course," Bfee interrupted, disgusted. "Why do you want to do such a damn fool thing as that?"

He had attempted to find a way of explaining the situation that didn't make it sound quite as absurd as it actually was, but hadn't been very successful. Quickly, before he lost what was left of his resolve, he recited, "I am in love with a girl I met at school and now she is in the Emerald City and she is going to be married so I have to find her and talk to her first," and then stared fiercely at the edge of the table.

"If she already has a fiancé, does she really need you to come poking your nose into her life? What are you planning to do, talk her out of her marriage with that silver tongue of yours?"

"Well," he stammered, "no, but –"

"What sort of background does this girl have? She is Munchkinlander, I hope?" The guilty look on Boq's face told Bfee otherwise, and he sighed. "Well, at least you are not chasing after some pretty little servant girl. Tell me _that_ much."

"Sort of the opposite," said Boq sheepishly.

Bfee stared, then passed a hand over his eyes, losing what little patience he had. "You do realize how stupidly you are behaving, don't you?"

Boq closed his eyes. "Dad, I have to do this, I _have_ to. I never got the chance to really tell her how I felt, before –"

"Don't tell me what you _have_ to do. You have a responsibility to this household and to the livelihood of the entire family, and we have already had to do without you for too long."

"That wasn't exactly my fault," Boq said between clenched teeth. He was losing patience, too.

"It's because of your schooling, isn't it, that you think you are too good to till the same earth as your father does, and your grandfather did, and your great-grandfather? Filled your head with lofty ideas, and now you think to insinuate yourself into the life of a society lady who cannot be expected to have any regard for you?" Bfee shook his head, his voice lowering, bitter and imploring all at once. "I was afraid this would happen. Ever since you were a child, you had so little use for anything I taught you. Rather read those storybooks of yours and dream about nonsense than build something real, something respectable. So eager to abandon us for something better."

"That's not true," Boq said quietly, shaken by the accusation. "It's not true, and I don't like that you would believe that of me so easily." Hesitating, unsure of how to continue, he glanced to one side and realized his mother had entered the room without either of them noticing.

Silently she moved to stand beside Boq. "Stop acting as if this has anything to do with you," she told Bfee. "You forget that he is grown now and fully able to make his own decisions, don't you?"

"So long as I am alive, I reserve the right to protect my children from making stupid decisions," growled Bfee.

Laelia put a gnarled hand on Boq's shoulder. "He only wants a chance to see this lady friend of his again. If it is a mistake, then let him make it, and realize on his own that he was wrong. The farm will still be standing when he gets back, either way."

"By encouraging this behaviour, you have only made it worse, Laelia," he said in a low voice. "Sentimentality has no place in this work, in this life. It will only make him hurt worse when reality sets in."

"You would have him stop feeling altogether."

Bfee sighed, and Boq could see that he was giving in. "If it would keep him here…"

"You may be right, but I won't know unless I try. And I promise that I will be back," he added impulsively, although right away he regretted it. For a moment the weight of responsibility had seemed about to lift… now it crashed down again, heavier than before.

Bfee leaned forward. "Back when?"

"Next year," Boq found himself saying, "by springtime."

And that was all. Shaking all over, not knowing whether to feel triumphant or defeated, Boq slipped past his sisters all wide-eyed gathered in the doorway of the kitchen, and dutifully pretended not to notice when his brothers leapt away from the bedroom door as it opened and tried to look disinterested.

It was only in the absolute stillness of that night as he lay awake that he was able to convince himself that it would be worth it in the end.

* * *

Boq wished that his siblings had not insisted on looking so betrayed, or that his father had done more than nod at him brusquely in parting, but the mood in the small house was unpleasantly tense already, and he was still too on-edge from yesterday's conflict to risk creating another scene now. At least his mother was not hurt by his leaving, although despite her unexpected stoicism she was still reluctant to stop hugging him and let him go.

Kievan drove Boq to the carriage stop at Stonespar End the next day in the horse-cart, with a bag packed and more money stashed away inside it than the family could truly spare now, since the year's crops were just now in the ground and there was no guarantee they would harvest enough to turn a profit. Boq tried not to feel too guilty about that, or about the fact that he was deeply glad to be leaving home again, if temporarily. Everywhere he turned there he expected to find a ghost (or perhaps a Witch's ghost, although he stubbornly refused to let himself entertain such a thought); it was all too familiar, oppressively so, and yet at the same time he could not escape the evidence of how much he had missed.

On the side of the road they passed people walking, singly and in groups, talking and laughing and boisterously enjoying their ability to do so without harassment. The mood of the countryside had lifted remarkably since the day that cyclone hit. Battalions of Guards had been seen marching northward without stopping, presumably returning to the Emerald City. For the moment the question of succession was only being asked in hushed tones; the Thropp line was broken, or as good as, since no one would suggest putting a practicing Witch in power to replace of a nominal one.

Although he would never admit it, Boq knew that his father had been unsettlingly accurate in pinpointing his reasons for leaving. Years away from home had made him unbearably restless when suddenly faced once again with the bleak and colorless life he had been born to. Eventually he would be forced to settle into it – to settle _for_ it – but for now he was young, he could travel, and (he thought, with an irrepressible sheepish grin that he hoped Kievan wouldn't notice) he was in love.

He would try to see Glinda one more time, at least – and maybe, maybe…

When they arrived, Boq vaulted over the side of the cart and Kievan handed him his bag. "Good luck, Boq," he said, and it was clear that he meant it.

As the cart rattled off over the uneven road, Boq turned away. Home was already behind him, and his thoughts were in the City.


	3. Chapter 2

Boq had been through the Emerald City twice before – once on the way to Shiz for the first time, and once in the opposite direction, accompanying Nessarose to Colwen Grounds – so he ought to have been a seasoned traveler by now. With that in mind, he managed not to look around too eagerly as the buildings appeared on the horizon and as they got near enough to begin making out details. It wouldn't do to look too much like a wide-eyed tourist when he was going to _live_ here.

Getting into the City took much longer than he remembered from the last time, and it didn't take long to find out why. The driver was having difficulty guiding the cab, small as it was, through the traffic. Not only were other cabs and larger four-wheeled carriages choking the roads, but crowds of people were weaving back and forth together in apparent glee, regardless of the drivers' yells or the nervous stamping of the more high-spirited horses. A few Guards seemed to be feebly attempting to sort things out, but were actually joining in the festivities themselves when they thought they could get away with it.

"Can't they see we're _celebrating_?" whined one particularly drunk man near Boq's cab.

Boq opened the small window at the rear of the cab and asked the driver, "Can you tell me what it is they're all so happy about?"

"Stupid half-witted tourists!" the driver barked, then amended, "It's the death of the Witch of the West, sir," in a falsely pleasant voice, and went back to shouting obscenities at passersby.

Boq wasn't about to press him for more information just then, and fell silent. Elphaba had finally been brought down… So not only had the two unfortunate sisters died within days of one another, but both deaths had only served to inspire curses and revelry, not mourning. The image of Elphaba gently comforting Nessa in her grief at his leaving rose to the surface of his mind, and the formerly cheerful noise of the crowd shifted into something venomous.

* * *

He wasted no time looking for the best neighborhood he could afford, but asked to be let off at the lower end of the City. Here the buildings were shabby and ill-kept; the roads were awash with the black, sticky mud and rotting garbage which, along with the heavy smog from the nearby factories, gave the City its distinctive and overpowering stench. Even the people seemed faded and dingy, as though the same coating of soot and dust that clung to the buildings had settled on them, too. They strode along in small groups rather than individually, with their hands shoved in the pockets of their worn and fraying coats or holding tightly to a small purse or a child's hand, their eyes hard, their faces grim. There was no celebration here.

It was a huge leap from the pleasant, welcoming aspect of the upper end of the City, and for a few moments Boq found his enthusiasm somewhat shaken. But as he turned uneasily to move on, he nearly ran into one of the solitary travelers, a rather tall, lanky man in well-kept if ill-fitting clothing. Startled into habitual politeness, although the gesture seemed embarrassingly rustic in this setting, he gave a small bow in greeting; to his surprise, the man bowed slightly in return, smiling warmly.

"My, but it's good to see a little Munchkinlander here, if you don't mind my saying. I am Munchkinlander myself, you might have gathered. Please forgive me for nearly knocking you down," the man said, all in a rush. "It's my fault, as I wasn't watching my step."

"Neither was I," Boq admitted. "I'm a bit lost. Do you think you could –"

"Would you mind walking with me? I'm just on my way home, and in a bit of a hurry."

Boq fell into a kind of trot beside him, taking two quick steps for every long stride the man took. "Actually, I've just arrived in the City today, and I'm looking for a place to live. Could you tell me –"

"But that's perfect!" the man interrupted, stopping short. "Or it may be. You see, I'm living on my own for a while and have decided to take on a boarder – it's just a matter of finding someone suitable."

As it turned out, "suitable" was the man's way of saying "quiet, sane and unionist", and all of which were categories Boq felt he could honestly claim to fall under. Their definitions of unionism may have differed, but it wasn't worth disputing. He'd had a rather fragmentary upbringing as far as religion went; his father was unionist but seemed content to let his children see to their own souls. And Boq was probably more familiar with the unionist tracts that were always to be found around the house than his father was, but that was out of curiosity and lack of reading material rather than any real spiritual leanings. Still, he would identify himself as unionist if asked, for convenience's sake if nothing else, so he did not feel as though he were being untruthful.

The man's name was Niel, and he was living alone because he had temporarily parted with his wife and children, who were staying in his family home in the northeast of Munchkinland until he had settled in and earned enough money to start his own business. For the time being, he worked long hours and made decent money in one of the factories not far from here, and did his best not to lose any limbs to the machinery.

"Actually I am a barber by trade, you see, or will be soon enough," Niel said earnestly, as they walked on. "When I have my own shop, if the Unnamed God sees fit to bless me so, my wife will join me, and we will live together again in an apartment upstairs. We'll make a fine living of it for our two little children."

The building he lived in was a tenement six stories high, no worse than any of the surrounding squalor, but certainly no better. Niel's apartment had three rooms, all in a row; a bedroom on each end, with a larger kitchen in the middle. Each room had a door opening into the next room of the apartment as well as a door opening to the hallway, so that they could both come and go without disturbing one another. The room he was renting out was the smallest, with only a table, a cot and a grimy window. But it was cheap, and the unexpected opportunity of having a fellow Munchkinlander for a neighbor in this unfamiliar place was more comforting than Boq would readily admit. Niel seemed quite pleased that Boq decided to stay, attributing their meeting to fate.

"The Unnamed God works in mysterious ways, does he not?" he reflected, and Boq nodded politely.

"Watch out," Niel warned as he left Boq to his new room. "The whole building is infested with rats."

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, he began to form a clearer picture of the events that had begun with the strange arrival of the alien girl – Dorothy – and the death of Nessa. He could envision the whole strange tale if he tried: the plain-spoken young farm girl, said to be a Witch herself, wearing Nessa's enchanted shoes, under Glinda's protection. The animated Scarecrow and the Lion who quailed at his own shadow, both joining Dorothy on her quest, all of them tasked by the Wizard to get rid of Elphaba as he had failed to do. And, worst of all, the gruesome bit of sorcery that had ended Elphaba's life. The gossip ran that there had been nothing left of her after the melting except for her broom, which the inscrutable Dorothy had brought back as proof that the Witch of the West was truly dead.

Further, although this part was always whispered, Captain Fiyero had turned out to be a traitorous scoundrel who broke the lovely Glinda's heart by unceremoniously ending their engagement and running off with – of all people – the Witch of the West herself. The loyal Guards. who captured him in Munchkinland not long after Dorothy's arrival, pronounced him dead, after torturing him in an unsuccessful attempt to find out Elphaba's location. Glinda had confirmed this herself not long after the Witch's death. She showed no outward sign of grief – as was fitting, since Fiyero had betrayed both her and the Wizard, after all, and did not deserve the gesture. All of Oz only sympathized with her more for her bravery.

The Wizard had left abruptly, returning to the other world, apparently taking Dorothy with him. Glinda, already a powerful and beloved figure in the City and well-known elsewhere in Oz, had taken charge.

All of this was a bit overwhelming to Boq, who was uncomfortably familiar with many of the major players in this sprawling tragedy. He knew he should feel worse about Fiyero's betrayal, because in spite of her public stance on the matter, Glinda could hardly fail to be hurt by it. But his own stubbornly negative view of Fiyero fit so neatly with the new public opinion that he couldn't help feeling somewhat vindicated. _He_ had known from the beginning that Fiyero wasn't trustworthy. If it was unfortunate for it to be found out in such a sudden and wrenching way, at least it had been done before the two had actually been married. Boq would not go so far as to think it convenient, but he was undeniably relieved that one obstacle in his way had removed itself with no inconvenience to him. He convinced himself that the relief was for Glinda's sake – surely she would be better off without Fiyero, if he had really cared so little for her feelings.

For the first time he began to pay attention to a few obvious holes in his plan. It had been quite optimistic of him to hope to find a way to cross paths with Glinda _before_, when she was mainly a celebrity and society lady; now she was ruling all of Oz. Would she even have time to speak to him? Surely she wouldn't turn him away if she realized who he was.

The thought made him uneasy, for reasons he would not allow himself to explore. Instead he found Niel, who was cooking a rather scorched pot of rice in the kitchen, and attempted to keep his tone casual. "How might someone go about obtaining an audience with Glinda?"

"Write to her, I suppose. If she's anything like our late Wizard she won't see anyone, although I've read that she intends to keep her office as open as possible. Why? Are you intending to try?"

"Ah, well…" he hedged. "No, I was only wondering. About – about how different she might be from the Wizard, as a ruler, you know."

Niel smiled fondly. "Not too different, I'm sure of that. Glinda is as noble and wise as the Wizard who raised her to power, and far more connected to the people of Oz. A charming young lady – everyone in the City loves and admires her."

"I don't doubt it." Boq found himself smiling, too.

* * *

Without any trade of his own, and with most jobs requiring unskilled labor already filled by Animals who had no choice but to work for far less pay, he was struck with the awful prospect of joining Niel in the factory. As he ventured out further into the City he began to notice more and more people who were missing an eye, or a finger, or worse. That, Niel explained, was a mark of a careless factory worker.

"You don't have to worry as long as you're clever and pay attention," he said. "That's why they don't hire Animals – they're all too dull to remember what they're supposed to be doing."

Boq was taken aback by the contempt with which the otherwise kind Niel spoke of Animals, and at first tried to object. "Perhaps it's only because they would have trouble handling the machinery with their paws."

"That's true as well, but it's not the reason. I am glad for it, at least, since the beasts have already taken most of the honest work in the City."

"They have families to support, too, I imagine…"

Niel snorted. "Support! They're Animals. They ought to go back to the forest and support themselves _there_, as they were meant to, and leave this and all cities to those of us who are truly capable of understanding." He shook his head with a sort of despairing annoyance, as though he didn't know how the Animals could possibly be so unreasonable.

There was nothing that could be said in the face of such conviction, so Boq left the apartment and took the opportunity to go out searching again. He was determined to avoid going to work in the factory, Animals or no.

* * *

It quickly became easier to overlook the ugliness of the lower end of the City. Boq forgave the buildings for looming decrepit over the filthy streets, because he knew it was within Glinda's power now to improve them; he forgave the people for staring straight ahead and looking over him as they passed, because the chance was that they admired and loved Glinda nearly as much as he did. Being so near to her now made him view everything with the same quiet hopefulness that thoughts of her inspired in him, that had borne him through the darkest times of his captivity. If his future was uncertain – if there was nothing else to cling to, as it had often seemed in that dreadful place – then the knowledge that somewhere Glinda was safe and happy, that the possibility remained, however slim, that he might someday see her again, had been something to hope for; the last, small hope he'd had that Nessa had been unable to take away.

He constructed a letter to Glinda, formally requesting an audience with her. _Constructed_ was the correct word; each stroke of the pen was meticulously executed, on the highest quality paper he could afford, to create the proper effect. It lay finished on the table in his room for days before he could bring himself to fold it, for fear that the ink might smudge. On his way to the post office he cradled the envelope gently rather than gripping it to avoid creasing the edges, and slipped it into the mail slot with the sort of reverence that was usually reserved for unionist ministers in contemplation of holy relics.

As if in a dream, he wandered home, feeling somehow drained and working to keep the vague doubts at the corners of his mind from solidifying so that he could no longer deny them. When he opened the door to his room – entering from the hallway, in case Niel was at home already – he was suddenly distracted from this effort by the realization that he wasn't alone.

A small brown rat was digging through his bag, which he had left open on the small table beside his cot. He realized this just as the rat noticed him – it had chewed the end off the loaf of bread he had intended to have for supper, and was clutching an oversized bit of it between its front paws. They stared, equally surprised to see one another. All at once, it threw the bread down and leapt off the table, disappearing under the cot.

There was a _snap_, as of a mousetrap being set off, and a high-pitched squeal of pain.

Boq had read of ferocious city rats that would attack people in broad daylight and which occasionally crept into small children's beds and killed them before anything could be done. And the continued feeble scratching noise seemed to indicate that the poor savage creature was injured and still alive. With considerable dread Boq realized that it would probably be necessary for him to kill it, and save it from further suffering. Grimly, he moved the cot aside. But only the rat's tail was caught in the mousetrap; the scratching was the sound of the rat still trying to fit through the narrow crack in the wall that had been obscured by the cot. All that he could see of it was its tail tip and the mousetrap, too wide to be dragged along into the crevice. Seeing no other immediate option, he resolved to use one of his boots as a bludgeon, and hopefully end the rat's life quickly.

He tugged on the rat's tail, eliciting another pained yelp and sending it scrabbling across the floorboards to the other side of the tiny room. But before he could gather himself to attack –

"Please," the rat cried.

Boq fell backwards, astonished. He stared.

The rat – or Rat – huddled down, panting in terror, staring back. "Please," she said again, weakly. "Sir, I'm only hungry, I'm only finding food where I can. There are many children waiting in the nest. Please, sir, don't kill me."

Boq shook his head disbelievingly. "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't realize you were…" It was then that he realized he was still holding the boot up like a weapon. Hastily, he tossed it aside. He was at a loss when it came to thinking of a suitable way to apologize for nearly murdering someone with a shoe, so he gave it up and moved on to getting her out of the trap.

As soon as she was free, the Rat tried to dash toward the hole in the wall, but her injured tail dragged painfully on the floor and slowed her down.

Boq anxiously tried to detain her. "Please – honestly, I don't want to hurt you, Miss…?"

The Rat froze again, and looked around at him in disbelief. "Teneke," she answered softly, and then repeated with a bit more spirit, "Miss Teneke."

"Miss Teneke," Boq smiled. "Please just stay a moment and I'll put a bandage on your – on your tail. Otherwise the wound could become infected and you might fall ill."

Teneke narrowed her beady eyes at him. "You en't going to try and hit me with something else now, eh, sir?" But she didn't seem to mean it. At least, she waited where she was while Boq snuck into the next room, found a thin rag to tear a bandage from, heated a pan of water to sterilize it, and went back to his own room just before Niel got home. Remembering his neighbor's negative views on Animals, Boq made sure to lock his door and speak as quietly as possible.

"I'm very sorry about the mousetrap," he told Teneke. "If I had known there were Animals in this building I wouldn't have allowed it."

"Ah, but there en't Animals in this building, sir, that's all." She flinched as he secured the thin band of fabric on her tail with a small knot. "It's because of the laws; we en't allowed."

The Animal banns were something Boq knew very little about; he vaguely remembered that the distinguished Goat professor who taught his first-year history class had mentioned them often in his lectures, to great controversy among the students and other teachers. But he knew that Animals in the City all lived in one district, not far from but lower than this one. Apparently the Wizard had felt very strongly that everyone would benefit from the separation – which was why Dr. Dillamond's dissension was met with such controversy. "Then why are you here? Wouldn't you be better off living with other Animals?"

"We Rats go where we please." Teneke fixed him with an unreadable look. "And other Animals would not be so pleased to house us, either."

"Oh." He frowned. "Well, I'm sorry again, Miss Teneke. You're free to go. I'll throw away the mousetrap, in case you decide to come back again."

Teneke had almost disappeared into the wall already, but at that she backed out and stared at him, her whiskers twitching.

"Did you want to take this with you?" Boq asked, fetching the bit of bread that Teneke had dropped before and offering it to her. "It, um… it fell on the floor." He wondered suddenly if it had been impolite of him to assume that she might not mind that just because she was a Rat; she was still watching him in apparent incredulity. But slowly she stood up on her back legs and took the bread from him.

"Sir, I will come back again, if you will have me," she said.

The solemnity in her manner made him uncomfortable. "Please, call me Boq."

"Thank you, Boq, sir. And my children would thank you, if they had got their speech yet, so I speak for them."

After she had left, Boq pushed the cot back against the wall, so that it looked as if nothing had happened. As he had promised, he got rid of the mousetrap, taking it down to the garbage cans on the sidewalk instead of using the trash bin in the kitchen so that Niel would not notice or ask about it.

* * *

He found a job in a stable, to his own surprise. The owner was a huge and alarming man named Oran who smelled strongly of horses and smoke. When Boq first ventured into his living quarters above the stables to ask for work, Oran looked him up and down and burst into raucous laughter.

"You want work, do you? Just off the farm for the first time and planning to make a life for yourself? Oh, don't gawk so, you only make it more obvious. Why should I hire you, hm? You could walk under one of my horses' bellies without ducking; they'd eat you for breakfast."

"I've been caring for animals since I was born."

"Yes, I'm certain you have, and I'm certain most of that care was for creatures who met their end under a butcher's knife. Or at your own hand. But the mangy donkeys you Munchkins take pride in working into the ground are a far cry from my horses here."

"Ponies," Boq said, rather inanely. "We don't use donkeys; we use ponies."

Oran laughed again, even more unpleasantly this time. Chagrined, Boq tried to leave quickly to salvage what was left of his pride, but Oran, still brushing away tears of mirth, called him back.

"Unfortunately, I could use a fine bantam cockerel such as yourself as a laborer in this little corner of hell. Get downstairs and muck out the first empty stable you see. Do it right and I'll consider paying you for the privilege."

It was ordered with such authority that it did not occur to Boq, until he was nearly finished laying down fresh straw in the clean stable, that Oran could easily have claimed not to be satisfied with his work and refused to pay him. But he proved to be at least slightly less uncouth than he seemed at first, paying Boq for the work and hiring him on as well.

As it turned out, Oran refused to hire Animals at all; he claimed, rather snidely, that they upset his horses. Oran was rude and offensive and often made wildly inappropriate comments to Boq and the other stablehands for his own entertainment, but he was very serious about the animals he cared for. They were cab horses, rented out daily to drivers who had no horses of their own. Such animals were often mistreated and worked to exhaustion and an early death, but not these. If a driver were unfortunate enough to bring one of Oran's horses back in poor condition, he would find himself punished to the fullest extent of City law, and have his license revoked until he could pay the fine for mistreatment. His were the strongest and healthiest horses in the City, and so drivers did their best to stay on Oran's good side, if he could be said to possess such a thing.

Boq found himself often the target of Oran's crude sense of humor at first – racial slurs and insinuations about the sort of indecent diversions Munchkins were supposed to get up to on their farms, mostly – but if he had learned anything at Colwen Grounds, it was how to hold his tongue. After a few weeks of placid unresponsiveness, Oran seemed to lose interest, and Boq was left to work in peace.

* * *

Within two weeks he had finally earned a small but significant amount of money to send home, the first move toward repaying what he had borrowed. In his letter he could not help forgoing modesty just enough to describe in detail his accomplishments thus far: he had found a place to work, and even though it didn't pay so handsomely he would still have his debt paid off within a few months, if he lived frugally enough; he had settled into a new home, made a few new acquaintances, begun to find his way around and learn the way of things. And he'd done all that _himself_, on his own power, of his own choosing. They thought him feckless and silly, but they had underestimated him, and he would prove it.

As if in support of this sudden rush of confidence, there was an envelope waiting for him at the post office when he stopped there to mail the letter. It was marked with the ornate seal of the Palace, which he waited to break until he had returned to his room, his hands shaking, his heart beating faster. The reply was only a few lines on a small slip of paper.

_Master Boq_, it read. _In light of our previous association as classmates, I am pleased to accept your request for an audience. Regretfully, the meeting must be brief, as my attention is more urgently required elsewhere._

There was a date and time listed below – nearly three weeks from now – and then her hastily-scribbled signature. That was all.

Three weeks… He sat down abruptly on the edge of the cot with the letter held before him. In three weeks he would see her again, and he would finally, finally have her full attention. And he would say – he would say…

He stared at the page until the words ran together, both terrified and desperately, impossibly hopeful. She had remembered him.

It was a _chance_, and wasn't that all he had wanted?


	4. Chapter 3

Notes: OH HAY GUYS. I almost didn't see you there:O So I was trying to finish the next chapter before posting this one so it wouldn't be too cliffhangery, but whatev. I do not write very quickly, as you may have noticed. Also, I would like to hereby state that I totally accept and love and cherish and drool all over concrit, if you would like to be so kind as to give it. I want to know how to improve. And I promise I won't bite you. But you might get drooled on a little. Sorry. ;;

* * *

Teneke returned a few days later just before sundown, holding her bandaged tail anxiously as if she thought it might be rude to let it drag on the floor and hesitant to venture out from under the cot until Boq had formally invited her in. Then she marched out and greeted him with admirable dignity, considering that her last visit had nearly been fatal.

"You are just in time to join me for dinner," said Boq.

"Ah, no, no, sir, I am just coming by to say hello, just coming by to make certain you don't mind seeing old Teneke again, and – what's that you're having? Is it a nice, fresh apple?" Her whiskers quivered.

Boq had pulled an apple from his bag and taken out his pocketknife, and sat down on the edge of the cot where he could reach the table to cut it into slices. "It's not much of a dinner and this isn't much of a dining room, but you're welcome to it, anyway. Come on, there aren't any chairs, as you can see – you'll have to sit on the tabletop, that way we can talk face-to-face."

Wringing the end of her tail, Teneke looked all around as if expecting a trick. "No, I couldn't, sir. I would not dare."

"Why not?" he asked. "I'd be a poor sort of host if I ate at the table and made my guest eat on the floor."

That was all the encouragement she needed. Eagerly Teneke clambered up the table leg and took her place on the very edge of the table, her dark eyes shining. Boq handed her an apple slice and she nibbled at it daintily.

"I hope your tail is feeling better," Boq said, trying not to look too sheepish.

"It is, thank you. Although the pups – my children, I mean – were just as eager to gnaw at the ends of the bandages, you can't imagine. It was trouble indeed to get them to stop for a moment so I could rest. But they're at the age for it, sir; won't stop playing for anything."

"How many children do you have?"

"Dozens." Seeing Boq's momentary surprise, she added, "Only seven in this litter to start with – that was a blessing, when you think as I have reared so many as sixteen at once – and four left now."

"What do you mean? What happened to the other three?"

"Died."

It was so bluntly spoken that it took a moment for Boq to register what she'd actually said. He stopped in the midst of cutting another apple slice and studied her apprehensively, but Teneke went on turning her portion around and around in her paws, not looking at him. "I'm sorry," he offered uncertainly.

"It's the way of things," Teneke said, but she was troubled now. "So much like lowly rats we live. Not only Rats anymore, but all of our fellow Animals. All of our children at risk just for living."

She shook her head and went on eating. Boq tried to follow her example, but he wasn't hungry anymore. They fell silent for a moment; across the hall a baby was crying, shrilly and insistently, while its tired mother sang a lullaby too infused with desperation to be of any comfort.

So employers refused to hire Animals, so Animals had to crowd together in the worst slums of the City if they wanted to live there at all, so they couldn't go to school or hold influential positions or speak too loudly for fear of reprisal. He had known all that, or learned it since moving here, and still hadn't really understood. But here before him was a mother – a Rat, but what did that matter? – who accepted the loss of her children with a shake of her head, because it was what she had come to expect. It was too awful for him to fathom; yet how many more were there like her, in the City, in the Animal district?

"Perhaps things will get better," Boq said when he couldn't bear that line of thought anymore. "Now that Glinda – I mean, with the change of leadership, isn't there a chance…"

Teneke's ears twitched backward, and she looked up at Boq with undisguised sadness. But she smiled and said, "It may be, sir. I hope so. But, sir, I have to be getting back home." She tucked what was left of her apple slice under her arm in an awkward carrying position. "If you don't mind, I think I will bring this back to my pups. Give them something to chew on that en't their poor mother, for once."

"Miss Teneke…" Boq tried to find something comforting or meaningful or at least intelligent to say in parting, but he was painfully aware that none of that could be of the slightest use to her. "Will you bring them here sometime? Some evening?" he asked instead, hardly knowing what he was saying. "Your children, I mean – I'd like to meet them. And if you'd like, I could watch them for a while, and you could rest – and you wouldn't have to leave so quickly."

He saw immediately that he had done something right. "It would be a blessing," Teneke said, her voice breaking. "Thank you. If there were anything, anything we could do in return…"

Boq shook his head. "I'll just be glad for the company."

Light in the little room was fading with the end of the day, and though it was the middle of summer, the shadows seemed to bring a chill with them. Gas for the lamp was expensive, and his only candle, borrowed from Niel, was half-melted already; Boq preferred to save them for emergencies. But the ominous stillness left in Teneke's wake made Boq wish he could afford to give in to the childish impulse to use light to chase away the doubts that came with nightfall. He went to bed, but lay awake for a long time, watching the shadows move along the walls. Of course Glinda would do something about the plight of the Animals – everyone said she was much more aware of the people of Oz than the Wizard had been, much more open and just as wise. Of course she would.

The baby in the apartment across the hall had not stopped crying all evening. Just as Boq was finally starting to drift off to sleep, someone in the apartment beside it could be heard to slam three times on the wall and thunder, "Make that goddamned kid _shut up_ or I'll come over there and do it for you!"

Abruptly the baby went quiet, but Boq, wide awake now and listening, thought he heard a faint, bitter sob from the child's mother.

_So much like lowly rats we live…_

* * *

But in the light of morning any doubt he had was quickly brushed aside, and he threw himself into the motions of his daily routine with a will. By the morning of the appointed day he thought he might even be feeling somewhat confident, although he hadn't slept much the night before and it took him several tries to button his shirt evenly.

So he found himself shakily climbing the interminable steps to the Emerald Palace, winding his way through the halls and getting lost more than once, despite having been given simple directions. The magnificence – or the _gaudiness_, the grand scale of the place, was dizzying. It seemed designed to overwhelm and intimidate. How could anyone _live_ here? Plenty of important- and busy-looking people passed him, mostly without noticing him but sometimes sparing him a disapproving glance; if he looked as out of place as he felt, he couldn't blame them.

Just as he was beginning to panic, he turned a corner and found himself just where he was supposed to be. The door to the conference room was standing open, and Boq could hear a conversation being held: a man's clipped and respectful tones and – his heart soared – the unmistakable voice he had been listening for. He took a deep breath and stepped into the doorway.

Glinda looked… older. Careworn, he should say, which wasn't surprising; dressed not in her old customary glorious pink ruffles and ribbons but quite sensibly, which _was_ a little surprising, but understandable given the dignity of her new position. But something else had changed. The image of her preserved in his mind was of a lively and beautiful high-spirited girl, always in motion, effortlessly commanding every conversation and every room just by the breathtaking force of her presence – Galinda. Of course, she'd come back from her first trip to see the Wizard with a new name, a prestigious future in public relations, and much less time to spend socializing with her classmates. But she'd still had that same self-assurance, the full awareness of her own strengths and how to use them.

Now she was quiet. She _looked_ quiet. In her face, in her plain white dress and hair modestly pinned back, in the way she carried herself. Different. Was something missing, or had something been gained? He couldn't quite make it out.

At first she did not notice him. She was seated, speaking to an older gentleman with graying hair and a vaguely wry expression which didn't seem to match the tone of their conversation.

"I'll draft another letter this afternoon, if I have time," Glinda was saying, rather sharply, "but, Tyrrell, if they really want to decide for themselves how they want to be governed, I will not press the issue."

The man nodded respectfully. "Please do. Whatever they may think they want, your input is needed for the good of Oz." He left the room, brushing past Boq without acknowledging him, but Boq wasn't paying attention. As Glinda's eyes followed the man across the room, narrowed slightly perhaps in annoyance at his abrupt exit, she finally noticed Boq waiting awkwardly in the doorway. Artfully she rearranged her expression into one of cheerful greeting.

"Is that you, Master Boq? I hardly would have recognized you. Close that door, if you don't mind. Come in and sit down just there."

Sit down. That was a good idea. Mechanically he obeyed her orders and managed to cross the room and make it into the high-backed ornate chair across from her without any major mishaps.

Glinda gave him a vaguely expectant look and he cast about wildly for something sensible to say. "It's – it's very good to see you again." There, that wasn't so bad. She smiled gently.

"I was very surprised to receive your letter. The last I heard, you were still in residence with Nessa – allow me to express my condolences for your loss," she said formally, quickly, and tried to continue. "What are –"

But Boq gripped the arms of the chair to keep himself from leaping out of it and interrupted, "Wait. Do you mean that when Nessa wrote to you – she mentioned me?"

"Of course."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing in particular… only mentioned that you were there with her. She said that you took care of her." Glinda paused and gave him a shrewd, searching look. "I had assumed that the two of you were – involved."

"_No_," snapped Boq, with vehemence that surprised them both. He sat back again and tried to compose himself. Glinda didn't know. Nessa wouldn't have told anyone that she was holding him against his will, of course, and he had gathered that there hadn't been much publicity about the misrule of Munchkinland elsewhere in Oz. Glinda hadn't seen Nessa since their school days, and it was staggering to him how much she'd changed in that time even though he'd watched it happening – surely Glinda, who hadn't been there, would have trouble believing it. "I'm sorry," he said, hesitantly. "Nessa and I…"

"I can see that it's a sore subject," Glinda said, sounding oddly relieved. "Let's talk about something else."

"You seem to be doing well since the Wizard left," offered Boq. Immediately he realized that was wrong, too. He meant that she was settling into her position as the Wizard's replacement, but the flash of hurt in her eyes made him suspect that she was thinking of Fiyero instead. "I mean, this is – you have…" He gestured around, stalling as he tried to cover up the mistake. "I like your Palace."

"It's very grand, isn't it?"

"Yes. And easy to get lost in." He glanced up at her sheepishly, but she was looking off to her side, her chin resting on her hand, thoughtful.

"So what brought you to the Emerald City, Boq?" she asked, with the air of someone trying to rescue a floundering conversation for the sake of their own distraction. The use of his name without an honorific, however, did not escape him.

For a moment he wondered how she would react if he answered honestly… But he had seen her expression at the vaguest mention of the events surrounding the Wizard's departure, and although he wanted nothing more than to tell her right away that he was here only for her – he would have to bite his tongue and wait. "I wanted to escape Munchkinland for a while," he told her instead, not untruthfully.

She sighed. "Ah. Munchkinland."

"What's wrong with Munchkinland?" he asked, just a little defensively.

Sitting up again, she crossed her legs delicately and smoothed the folds in her skirt. "I didn't mean that."

"And I…" he paused. The silence drew her attention again. "I'm only here temporarily. So I wanted to see you. While I'm here." Wanted to see her more than once, hopefully under better conditions than this… for it was obvious that her mind was elsewhere. But he couldn't quite bring himself to broach that topic yet, and he spent a moment staring just past the toes of his boots, somewhat desperately polished for the occasion but unmistakably old and worn, at the richly carpeted floor some inches below, trying stubbornly to ignore the awkward silence.

"That's kind of you," Glinda said finally. Her hands, though resting primly in her lap, were clenched tightly into fists. She seemed to consider for a moment and then went on, hesitantly. "Very kind. I'm a bit surprised that you would want to visit, though."

"What? Why wouldn't I?"

"Well, I wasn't…" Suddenly her eyes narrowed and she gave him a sideways look. Closed-off, almost suspicious. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again, replaced with a mild expression; he was left trying not to let his confusion show. "Well," she began again, more confidently, "You and I were never very close, were we?" It wasn't really a question.

He nearly recoiled at the shock of hearing it said so plainly, but managed to keep steady. "Oh," he said. He didn't trust himself with a more involved response.

Glinda tilted her head wistfully, not noticing his discomfiture. "It hasn't been that long, really, since Shiz; but it feels like ages. I miss it."

Boq's only memories of college were of studying obsessively at every spare moment (he had to keep his grades up in order to keep his scholarship, without which he could not afford to stay), trying to keep the infatuated Nessarose at bay while avoiding having to hurt her feelings (or invoking the wrath of her imposing green sister), and of being distracted from both by his continued failure to stand out amongst the more colorful and interesting people that Galinda had then surrounded herself with. He had never looked back on it with longing before, being someone who was more interested in looking toward the future, but he tried to see it now from Glinda's perspective. It was a simpler time, certainly, even for him – and especially for someone who had gone from a sorceress-in-training to the Ruler of Oz practically overnight.

"We had fewer things to worry about," he said carefully. "And we were all… well… younger." He didn't dare say any more than that; it came too close to mentioning the ones they had lost again.

"That's it exactly." Was it his imagination, or had she relaxed considerably? She leaned back in her chair, occupying it perfectly and letting it frame her just as it should. When she smiled, it was almost fondly, and though she wasn't exactly looking at him – some mystical point above and beyond him, more like – he considered it a victory. "We were young and carefree. Well, most of us were."

The afterthought seemed to bring her back to the present, though the faraway look did not fade. Boq sat up straighter in an attempt to catch her eye, feeling woefully small in the outsized conference room chairs.

"I suppose you've been enjoying the last few weeks' festivities," Glinda said, very slowly.

Did she mean the sickening, giddy celebration over Elphaba's death? "Not really," he muttered. Her gaze sharpened and she fixed him with it so intently that he was afraid he'd said the wrong thing again. "I haven't – I didn't really have time," he tried to explain. "They've mostly stopped by now, you see, and when I arrived I was busy with other…" He trailed off as her sudden intensity faded. What was that about? Hadn't she and Elphaba been close in school? Very close, roommates and best friends… she had been terribly shaken when she returned from her trip to the Emerald City without Elphaba, refusing to discuss it with anyone. Or at least with him. He had supposed that Glinda had also been a victim of what Nessa had thought of as Elphaba's selfish, inexcusable abandonment.

Elphaba. He had almost forgotten.

"A few weeks ago," he said hesitantly, watching Glinda for her reaction, "I spoke to Elphaba."

Glinda went very still. "What?"

"She was – well, we ran into each other. She wanted me to give you a message."

Aside from a sharp intake of breath, there was no response. Boq wasn't sure if he should go on, if the mere mention of Elphaba's name caused such upset even in a former friend, but he had promised Elphaba he would. He tried to think back to their conversation. "She said – she told me to tell you that she said, 'I hope you're happy'. This was before the house fell… she seemed to want to contact you herself if she could manage-"

All at once Glinda was on her feet. Any warmth he might have imagined in her before was gone, replaced by a curt, impersonal formality. "I'm sorry, but my next meeting is very soon and I really must prepare."

"What?"

"You have to leave," Glinda snapped, and at the sudden command he stood up, too, even as he tried to form an objection.

"But we were – I mean I haven't –" He found himself being crowded towards the door, and panicked; was she seeing him out or throwing him out? It wasn't supposed to go like _this_, he hadn't said anything he'd meant to – "Can I see you again?" he asked desperately.

"I'm afraid I can't afford to keep wasting time on these kinds of frivolous social visits. Goodbye, Master Boq, and good luck to you." She opened the door and stood waiting for him to leave, biting her lip fiercely.

All of the things he had wanted to tell her whirled incoherently through his mind, and he couldn't make sense of any of them. If he would never see her again, then for his own sanity he ought to say what needed to be said in spite of her recent loss, as terrible as that would be. Shouldn't he?

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. No matter how long he had waited for this chance – to hurt her now would be infinitely worse than keeping quiet. And if she didn't _want_ to see him again, what did it matter?

Before he had made up his mind, he took an uncertain step over the threshold, and the door closed sharply behind him. He stared at the elaborate paneling, too stunned to react. Rather frantically he considered knocking, took a step backward instead, and almost ran into an orderly carrying a stack of papers.

"No loitering in the hallways," said the orderly.

Boq looked at him, then back at the door, blankly. It was still closed.

"If you have no business here, you'd better leave," the orderly insisted, irritably.

Quite inescapably, it occurred to Boq that he did not, in fact, have any business here.

And he left.


	5. Chapter 4

Notes: So, uh, I'd like to blame the long delay in this chapter solely on school and life craziness, but a good portion of it actually goes to me being a total spazbucket dorkface. HEY, AT LEAST I ADMIT IT. O: This chapter brings us up to date on what Glinda's been doing, and ends just after the last chapter does. I hope that's clear enough. o-o

* * *

The Wizard left a day after Elphaba's death, amidst a great outcry of sadness from the Ozians who gathered to see him off. "I hope you will all give Glinda the same respect and trust you gave me," he told them, and would not meet Glinda's eyes no matter how long or how pointedly she stared. The sense of unreality that settled over her, once he had gone and the crowd began to look at her with the same awe they'd had for him, was almost a relief. Somehow, she had managed to single-handedly gain control of the government, oust Oz's beloved leader, and imprison his most treacherous conspirator without a struggle. Nessarose dead, and Fiyero, and Elphaba…

It was all past believing, so she accepted it. There was no need, yet, to wonder what to do next. People came to her with problems and she did what she could to solve them.

First among these was Dorothy, who had been left behind by the Wizard, possibly on purpose; Glinda wouldn't have put anything past him now. They met in the empty throne room, away from the rollicking crowds outside, the great mechanical head the Wizard had once hid behind sitting dormant in the shadows; the Lion stood beside Dorothy protectively, and that creepy Scarecrow had a comforting hand on her shoulder. Dorothy hugged her little dog to her chest, her eyes filled with tears, and looked so young and tired and hopeful that Glinda could almost feel sorry for her, though mostly she wished she could cry herself. Consciously, she detached herself from the scene, focusing on how she fit into it: her posture, the tilt of her head, the way her hand gripped the ornate wand beside her like a walking-stick with her fingers curled just so. Little details, comforting things, easy to get lost in.

"Please," Dorothy begged. "The Wizard's hot-air balloon was my only way home. Please, can you help me?"

It was unlikely. Glinda had become very good at acting as though she knew what she was doing, but sorcery had never been her best subject. Then again, if she could find a way, it would be a respectable start to her already precarious career as the ruler of Oz. Perhaps, she thought with a wave of anxiety, there might be something in the Grimmerie, if only she could decipher it…

"I will help you," Glinda promised. "But it might take –"

"The shoes," said the Scarecrow in an odd voice. "The Wicked Witch said they had magical powers, didn't she, Dorothy? She said they could give you anything you wanted if you knew how to use them." His unsettlingly lifelike painted eyes were fixed the whole time on the floor at Glinda's feet.

"Oh." Glinda considered this, then backpedaled immediately. "Of course."

The Lion ventured, bashfully, "The Scarecrow does have brand-new brains, you know. Perhaps he's thought up the answer with them."

"But I don't remember the Wicked Witch saying that…" Dorothy stared at her own feet in the glittering red shoes, then at Glinda for confirmation.

Well, why not? She had no other ideas, and if Elphaba had really said that… Glinda nodded, already mentally constructing an explanation for why it might not work, just in case.

"But how do I use them?"

The Scarecrow had gone back to staring at the ground, perhaps out of respect, and Glinda had to fabricate quickly. "What is it that you want the most?"

"To go home to my aunt and uncle. With Toto," she added.

"Don't just say so," the Scarecrow prodded. "Wish it."

Dorothy closed her eyes and hid her face in Toto's fur. Though Glinda had doubted before, now she found herself holding her breath, waiting. It was plain even to her that the shoes really were enchanted, and that somehow this child _was_ able to call on their power. Before she even knew what had happened, the place where Dorothy had been standing was empty, and the very second she realized it there was a blinding flash of red light. The Lion yelped and leapt up stiffly like a startled house-cat, all four paws briefly leaving the ground.

And the alien girl who had caused such a stir was gone without a word.

"My," huffed the Lion. "I hope she got home all right and hasn't just disappeared for good."

Heart pounding, only just having managed to keep her carefully controlled pose, Glinda couldn't help wondering the same thing.

"Don't worry about her," the Scarecrow said. He sounded so certain – almost triumphant. How could he have known that would work? Surely there wasn't anything to the Wizard's conceit of handing out virtues to anyone who asked, like some kind of cheap parting gift. If there was, she should have asked for some before he left. "Thank you for your help, Miss Glinda."

"You are both welcome to stay in the Emerald City for as long as you wish," Glinda said smoothly, despite her unease. "As two of the famed Witch Hunters, you would certainly be well received."

"I would rather get back to my forest, thank you," the Lion said. "The City is no place for an Animal like me." He nodded to her, regally, but there was a hint of suspicion in his eyes, and she couldn't blame him. The City was hardly a place for _any_ Animal lately.

"And you?"

Both had already turned to go, but the Scarecrow twisted awkwardly to look back at her over his shoulder. For the first time, his eyes met hers, and a chill went through her, the hair on the nape of her neck standing on end. "I have to leave, too," he said softly. "Other appointments to keep. Goodbye, Glinda, and good luck."

And they were gone. In her mental view of the scene, she was a small, frail figure, like a doll, abandoned, alone under the throne room's high ceiling. She sank into the chair behind her, trembling all over without quite knowing why. Those _eyes_…

* * *

After she had allowed herself a few minutes to gather her wits, she hurried back towards her room. A Guard approached her respectfully in the hallway, saluted, and spoke. "Miss Glinda, the Goat who escaped a few days ago has been found. He'd gotten into a closet and was eating all the straw from the brooms."

Glinda did not care how polite he seemed, or that this was one of the Palace Guard who had likely never left the City in the service of the Wizard: she saw the uniform and found it suddenly difficult to breathe. _Fiyero…_ "He's unharmed, I hope."

"Yes, of course. We've returned him to his cage."

Glinda rounded on him, nearly forgetting to keep her voice level. "No," she said. _Never again_. "Bring him here; I want to see him."

Over the course of the last two years, as the people of Oz had grown more and more afraid of the Wicked Witch, the Wizard had leaned harder and harder on the already beleaguered Animals, taking away their most basic rights as casually as a wave of a hand. Rebel Animals were nearly as hated and feared as the Witch herself; their cause, shaky as it had already been to the mind of the average human, had been completely undermined by her public association with them. So although nothing could be done to quell the real source of unrest, with every new bann there was a false sense of security, of progress, that kept people quiet.

And Glinda had simply stood by and watched as Animals were herded closer and closer together into the slums of the City, had tried not to know what happened to the ones who dared to speak out. It was so easy to ignore the stirrings of her conscience when she was so adored – when every day her life edged closer to the kind of perfection she had always dreamed of finding. As long as everything appeared beautiful, it was easy not to notice it was rotten underneath.

She watched in growing horror as Doctor Dillamond was led to her on a rope leash, his spectacles missing, his cloak frayed and filthy. Glinda's denial of the dark underside of the Wizard's reign had been so complete that she had managed to avoid reaching the obvious conclusion – that the Animal prisoner who the Wizard had ordered to be isolated in the smallest of cages, who had been a respected member of society and therefore made a perfect example to other Animals of what would happen if they opposed him, was, in fact, her old history professor – until the night he had escaped. But here was the most terrible proof of the Wizard's methods standing placidly before her, gone from a wise, dignified Goat to an unreasoning animal.

Glinda knelt beside him, hesitant. "Doctor Dillamond," she began, half expecting that he would smile grimly and ask, in that old, gravelly voice, if she didn't now regret having paid so little attention in history class. But he only bleated absently and stared with those dull, yellow goat's eyes, unlit by even the slightest spark of understanding or recognition. It was obvious that there was nothing of him left, and it was more than she could take. Shame and anger filled her, spurring her into action, curling her hands into fists almost in spite of herself.

"Are there any other caged Animals anywhere in the Palace?" she demanded of the confused Guard, who was still holding the rope leash.

"N-no…"

"None at all? What about in prison?"

"The Animal prisoners who've lost their speech are usually shipped out to the farmland west of here, where they can be put to work."

There was nothing she could do about that now. Inwardly, she sighed. She would have to find a way to accommodate poor Doctor Dillamond – he couldn't very well be penned in the Palace stable like common livestock. His mind may have been lost for good, but she could not bring herself to insult his memory that way. And she felt, but did not allow herself to think: _What would Elphie have done?_

"Bring him to the servants' quarters," she said. "Tell the head housekeeper that I've ordered her to give him a room there. Fully furnished, as normal as possible, with the necessary adjustments considering his condition."

The Guard glanced nervously at the door, as if checking his escape route in case she turned out to be dangerously insane. "May I ask what those adjustments might be, miss?"

"I don't know – a trough, some straw – she can ask the stable master if she gets confused. But I want it to be as normal as possible. Tell her that he's to be kept there and carefully looked after, pending future orders."

"Yes, Miss Glinda."

"And tell her to send someone to begin clearing out the Wizard's private rooms. I'll be moving into them as soon as possible."

He hesitated for only a moment before saluting again and tugging on the leash, until Doctor Dillamond trotted placidly into step behind him down the long hallway.

* * *

Immediately she began organizing her days into a strict routine. She met with as many high-profile members of Emerald City society as she could. Supporters of the Wizard's rule who needed to know that their livelihoods would not be threatened by his leaving wrote her frantically or turned up demanding to speak to her, while she made efforts to seek out social alliances with those whose knowledge might be useful to her in the future. Previously, Morrible had taken care of dealing with real political connections for the Wizard, but this was one element of her new routine that Glinda found effortless. Businessmen, society ladies and diplomats walked into meetings full of anxious questions, and they left with complete confidence in her wit and ability.

Yes, she was very good at acting as though she knew what she was doing.

Some of the people she met with were connections she had already made in the City; at one time, she might have called them friends, but she could not use that term so lightly anymore. As long as she kept her true intentions to herself, she could mine them for wisdom or advice, but she could not afford to trust anyone enough to bring them into her confidence – even when they seemed to expect it.

"So," one of them began during their first meeting after the Wizard's departure, more than a week into her new routine, his tone rising almost to familiarity. "You have performed impossible feats of sorcery and earned the endorsement of the Wizard himself. What might your next move be?"

Glinda smiled delicately. "A bit forward, don't you think, Master Tyrrell?"

"I apologize, miss. We've known one another for some time, and those who have become accustomed to one another's company sometimes assume liberties they are not entitled to have." He chuckled. Tyrrell was a diplomat, indeed; distinguished, well-mannered, able to navigate through potentially dangerous conversations with ease. Glinda had admired him since she had come to stay at the Palace, and he had always seemed to harbor a sort of fatherly affection for her. Now, though, she found herself listening uneasily to the meaning behind his words. What were his intentions? How could she find out? He was at least as good at this game as she was, possibly better.

"If I were to propose my next move to you," she tried, keeping her tone light, "would you offer me advice?"

"If you won't deem it too forward, I will venture to offer you advice regardless. Ideally, your next move ought to be something simple, something that will fulfill expectations and confirm your authority in the eyes of those who may have doubts."

"From that, am I to assume that there are many doubters?"

"I was speaking hypothetically. If doubts there are, I have not heard them voiced." Tyrrell's expression softened. "The Wizard himself needed years to garner the level of trust and acceptance with which you are beginning your reign. You are uniquely positioned to do much good, if you use the power you have been given wisely."

Though he obviously meant to encourage her, his words only reminded her of how much there was at stake. With every passing day, she encountered a new set of problems that, while welcome for the distraction they provided, were becoming increasingly difficult to solve without help. She decided to risk it.

"I ask for your advice, then." She had thought this through: an institution which had started as a real Guard, simply a group of highly-trained soldiers simply guarding the throne room and the Palace, had soon grown so powerful and sprawling that it replaced Oz's standing army. They had reported directly to the Wizard, and in theory would report to her now, but she wanted nothing more to do with them. "I want to severely reduce the number of Guards in Oz. If what you say is true, I may not need as much guarding as the Wizard did, and I know I need not remind you of the corruption and brutality which has recently been brought to light."

With the last few words, her voice shook, just slightly, in spite of her cool expression, but it only served to strengthen her point. To her surprise, Tyrrell shook his head darkly. "My advice would be to reconsider, my dear."

"And why would that be?"

"If you will forgive me for saying so, you do have good reason to want certain ones of them ousted; no one in Oz would fault you for punishing the ones who have committed the worst wrongs. But this is still a violent and uncertain time, even with the death of the Wicked Witch; people fear rebel Animals more than ever, now that they have lost their leader and may be desperate. There are whispered reports of Flying Monkeys sighted in the lands to the West, moving toward the City. I can see that much of this is news to you," he observed.

Glinda cursed herself mentally for allowing him to see through her. She had known these things from scanning the City newspapers and listening in on servants' gossip, but she was still thinking of Fiyero, and of Elphaba, and the Flying Monkeys she had seen that day at Kiamo Ko, and in all of this frank discussion, detachment was becoming difficult to sustain.

But Tyrrell went on with a charitable air. "It may all be rumor and speculation, and it will probably amount to nothing. But in the midst of such confusion, receiving the news that their leader is removing what they may feel is the only thing keeping them safe from their enemies would be far from reassuring, no matter how justified your reasoning."

And that would have been a terrible mistake. All she had was the trust of the people, and if she lost that before she managed to improve the Animals' situation, she might never have another chance.

"Thank you for being honest with me, Master Tyrrell," she said.

"If ever you require further advice, I hope you will remember me." Tyrrell gave a smile that was just a bit too sharp-toothed to lend credence to the kind words, and Glinda said her polite goodbyes with a growing sense of helplessness.

Something else had occurred to her that was even worse. The enemies that Ozians currently feared, thanks to the Wizard's lies and propaganda, were the Animals. If having fewer Guards would raise questions against her own trustworthiness, what might they do if she seemed to be siding with the Animals? What kind of backlash might that cause for the Animals themselves? What other obvious mistakes might she be making, or might she make in the future, purely out of ignorance?

Therefore, for her so-called next move, she made do with summoning to her meeting room one morning the Lieutenant-Colonel in command of the Guards stationed in Munchkinland, lately returned with his men to the Emerald City. Lieutenant-Colonel Velimir was lean and dark-eyed, and nowhere near as respectful as the Palace Guards, practically sneering as they sat down and introduced one another, and openly derisive when she told him why she had brought him here.

"The entire battalion, Miss Glinda?" he scoffed. "You would have me arrest over five hundred men at once?"

He intended to dissuade her with intimidation and a raised voice, but Glinda only leaned forward across the long meeting room table and assumed a pleasant expression. For once, she was entirely in her element. The practiced diplomats she had been speaking with lately were impossible to pin down in all their shrewdness and subtlety; this soldier was brash and coarse, nothing like them, and easily dealt with. "Everyone who was involved in the murder of Captain Fiyero. If you're saying that includes the entire battalion, then by all means, arrest them all."

His mouth actually hung open for a moment before he could go on, shaking his head. "Forgive me, miss, but you absolutely don't have the authority to give such an order. Only the Wizard –"

"You weren't here when the Wizard left, so I'll overlook your blatant disrespect for the moment," Glinda interrupted sharply. "However, the Wizard _is_ gone, and he left me in charge; the Guard exists to protect the ruler of Oz, no matter who that might be. And now you know that I absolutely _do_ have the authority to give any order I see fit. Do you understand, Colonel?"

Velimir studied her warily. "Those responsible will be arrested," he relented.

Later, a Palace Guard was sent to inform her that her orders had been carried out. Fiyero's killers were imprisoned. For the rest of the afternoon Glinda walked just a bit more lightly, found it a bit harder to keep the tears from her eyes. It was so very little, and yet it was something.

* * *

Glinda lost herself easily in the more ornamental duties of government, the appearances and speeches and reassurances that everything was indeed wonderful again now that the Witch was dead. As long as she was standing before these crowds of elated citizens, praising their beloved fraud of a Wizard and the boundless prosperity and happiness that were sure to arrive any day now under her gentle guidance, she could believe every word she told them, borne up by her own lies. It was almost comforting, this complete disassociation, this conscious denial of emotion.

Everyone expected her to be solemn; she had lost her fiancé, after all, though to her great relief, no one ventured to mention it to her – too vile a scandal surrounding it, perhaps. But it would not do to appear too melancholy amidst all the celebration. She tried to strike a balance, tried not to think too deeply on it. Focus on the scope of the performance, the effect she had on her audience, be it large or small.

_Hold yourself together long enough to repeal the Animal banns_, she told herself, again and again. _After that, it doesn't matter._

The only compliment Morrible had ever given her, couched as it was in her snide, derisive tone, had been for what she claimed was Glinda's greatest strength – her ability to deceive the populace into thinking they're happy when they should be miserable, and for employing for a more practical purpose the love she could win from them so effortlessly. And as much as Glinda hated to admit that Witch could have been right – as much as the mere thought of her, even safely locked away, still made Glinda sick – it could be the only advantage she had, now.

She was abysmally unqualified to lead, and she knew it. Her role alongside the Wizard had been purely ceremonial, and she had no say in any of his so-called political decisions, nor had she cared to. The whole process was, frankly, _boring_; she had much preferred the field of public relations, because it had consisted entirely of being admired and adored. And what could have been more important than that?

When the cleaning was done and all her things moved there, she stormed into what had been the Wizard's private quarters like a conquering queen. The only thing she had not had removed from here was the Wizard's collection of books – ancient, dusty, dog-eared books of Ozian history and law, books of magical theory and religious rhetoric, and of the culture, geography and industry of every corner of Oz. Every kind of information needed to take control of a country in need of decisive leadership. The Wizard had read these books and known them well, Glinda was sure. If he had arrived here as a young man – younger than Glinda was now, in fact – and managed to survive this long with only cleverness and trickery, then perhaps she might actually have a chance. If she managed to survive the next few weeks.

Moving here was a practical decision on the surface: the Wizard's quarters were more spacious and closer to the center of activity in the Emerald Palace. But more importantly to her now, it was far away from her old room – the one she had stayed in since leaving Shiz and coming to live at the Palace, the room that was adjoined to Fiyero's. That room was closed up and left untouched, by her command. One day she would be the one to clear it, when she was stronger, when the memories weren't so sharp and clear that they threatened to overwhelm her any moment.

At night she sat at the dressing table in her new quarters, which were, as yet, free of any painful memories (though she supposed, bitterly, that she could always make new ones). The window across the room at her back stood open to catch the night breeze. Brushing aside an assortment of items – cosmetics, combs and hairbrushes of varying sizes – Glinda let one especially weathered history book from the fall open with a _thud_ and began flipping through it, resting her chin in one hand.

Vaguely, she remembered a history lesson about the monarchy that had existed in Oz before the Wizard's arrival – consisting of a single ruler who was supported by a wide circle of advisors, ministers, and assistants. Over the years, the Wizard had slowly done away with these subordinates, consolidating all of their influence into a single position of unchecked power, occupied by him, of course. And now occupied by Glinda – who had no political experience to speak of, who had always been told exactly what to say and do to best shore up the Wizard's edicts, who was now not only the sole person Ozians would look to for guidance but also the one who would be held accountable for their well-being. Before, if the Wizard in his zealous leadership miscalculated and committed some political misstep, Morrible was the one who had to work behind the scenes to find a way to quiet the dissatisfied mutterings, leaving the Wizard and Glinda above reproach. Now if Glinda made a mistake – as she was sure to do – she would be open to criticism from all sides.

But still, she had to be the one to take charge. Who else could she trust? How else could she ensure that Oz wouldn't be immediately pulled into the thrall of another set of petty and power-hungry dictators? If she wasn't exactly experienced in the governing of countries, at least she cared for the people enough to make a real attempt to solve their problems, instead of distracting them with artificial threats. How else could she make good on her promise?

And so every night she stayed awake as long as possible, reading books and scrolls of Ozian laws discarded with the Wizard's arrival, long before she or even her parents had been born. She read as quickly as she could, almost desperately, absorbing little or none of the actual meaning, until the print swam before her eyes and the candles had all gone out, until she couldn't keep from falling asleep and hearing Elphaba's dying cries echo through her dreams again.

* * *

The mood of the City was changing. After the celebrations died down, people went back to their lives, and the same daily disappointments and frustrations they'd always had. The arrests of the Guards who had killed Fiyero were reported in the papers as a triumph of the temperate justice of Oz's new leader, just as Tyrrell had predicted.

Daily she received and answered absurdly huge piles of letters written by everyone from family members congratulating her on her promotion to Ozian ambassadors she had never even heard of asking for any new instructions she might have for them. (She told them to carry on with whatever they had been doing, hoping she would find something in the Wizard's private library to give her an idea of what to tell them later.) Old schoolmates who hadn't spoken to her in years seemed ready to fall over themselves to see her now, and though she hated speaking to the sort of people she had known before Elphaba, the people she had gone crawling back to after Elphaba left, she felt she had to oblige. If nothing else, they would undoubtedly remember the old scandal of her having been so close to Elphaba, which Morrible had managed to suppress or explain away almost everywhere else, and she couldn't risk insulting those who had the power to cast doubt upon her trustworthiness.

Since poor Nessa's murder – Glinda couldn't think of it as anything else, now – there hadn't been any official communication between the throne and Colwen Grounds. The governing of Munchkinland had always been too trivial to be of much interest even to the Wizard as long as the farms were producing food for the rest of Oz, and much less to Glinda. She had no idea what kind of state things might be in, or how the line of succession would be carried out. And though she wrote to the capitol repeatedly, her letters went unanswered.

* * *

Most of her speeches in the first few weeks were given in the upper end of the City, where most of her closest connections were, where she felt most comfortable. But one day, gathering all her resolve, she traveled to the Animal district, flying there by bubble, alone and without any of the usual fanfare. She had not prepared anything to say; positive political spin came so naturally to her that sticking to a script could only restrict her effectiveness. By the time she settled to the sooty ground, a small crowd had gathered to watch her with varying degrees of wariness, some with what she was tempted to call hostility. They muttered to one another, in small, disorganized groups of twos and threes: two surly-looking Bears, Stoats, Hyaenas, a nervous family of Coyotes, and some strange Animals that Glinda didn't know names for; along with many more kinds on their own: one giant Tortoise, a handsome brown-and-black Goose, an Otter.

The only Animals remaining in the City were the most tenacious and hardened ones, who hadn't had the means to escape when the relentless oppression of the banns had first become apparent, the ones who had been able, for the most part, to keep quiet and escape notice. That much Glinda knew, but now she stood in the center of the Animal district, surrounded by filthy creatures in conditions more deplorable than she could have imagined, and any hope she may have had faded, replaced by the same heaviness she saw in the eyes of the Animals around her. This was the cause that Elphaba had charged her with upholding? _This_ was what she was supposed to fix?

"What is it you want?" one of the Hyaenas asked.

Every instinct she had faltered in the face of this, the most unwelcoming crowd she had ever stood before, and only with a great effort could she summon the strength to begin. "I'd like a few moments of your time –"

The larger of the two Bears snorted and turned around to the crowd as he spoke, although he was addressing Glinda. "If you think that just because they call you _good_ you can flounce into our home and tell us what to –"

Several voices interrupted him – "Hold your tongue, you!" – "Quiet, Oebron!" – "Let her speak!" – and Oebron fell silent with a wordless growl.

"Thank you." Glinda took a deep breath, trying frantically to think on her feet; somehow, she doubted they would respond positively to high words and empty reassurances. "I – I wanted to speak with you directly – with all of you in the Animal community. The Wizard is gone for good, and as his replacement in the ruling of Oz, I want to be as much a friend to you as I am to other Ozians. I want this to be reflected in the way all Animals are viewed under the law and in public opinion."

"It's all very well to _want_ these things," the Tortoise said gently. "What will you _do_?"

"In time, I'll… I'm planning to repeal the banns."

"_In time_, she says. She _plans_ to do it – do you hear?" the smaller Bear muttered.

Glinda raised her voice almost to breaking, reaching for an authoritative tone and only achieving a thin desperation. "I _will_ repeal them. I swear it, here before all of you. It will require planning, and I can't say how long it might take, because I don't know any more than you do. But I will make things better for Animals in Oz – I _will_."

Trembling with the force of passion behind her words, she closed her eyes against the tears that were threatening to form. The crowd broke into indistinguishable murmurs again, and Glinda ran through her flight spell in her mind for the thousandth time, in case it became necessary to escape from some kind of riot. But a smooth webbed paw touched her hand, and she opened her eyes to see the Otter beside her, grinning up at her mischievously.

"No need to yell, Miss Glinda."

"Nor yet to cry, as long as we aren't," the Tortoise added.

Most of the hostility had vanished from the Animals' faces; even Oebron was regarding her with a more tempered gaze. They were still skeptical, she sensed, but that would change.

A small brown creature with white spots – Glinda had no idea what to call it; it resembled an opossum with a furry tail and an open, friendly face – asked, "Anything else to add, miss, or are we free to go?"

"No, of course, you're free to go. Thank you for allowing me to speak here."

With a bit more confidence than before, Glinda approached the Goose before he could leave. "Excuse me; what's your name?"

"Greylag," croaked the Goose, peering up at her with one beady eye.

"Pleased to meet you, Master Greylag. May I ask you a question?"

He arched his long, graceful neck, affronted. "I haven't done nothing wrong."

"No, I…" Glinda knelt carefully to speak to him face-to-face, trying not to let the hem of her dress trail in the mud, to no avail – but never mind. "I'd like to ask you for a favor."

"Well, well. What might it be?"

"Can you fly a long way, do you think, in only a few days? Could you deliver an important letter for me to Munchkinland, and bring back a response?"

"Flying a long way's what I'm made for." Greylag stretched out a pair of magnificent wings and beat the air with them thoughtfully. "Though favors ought to be repaid, I think."

"That's fair. What would you like in return?"

"Keep your promises." He chortled as if to reassure her, as he prepared to follow her in her flight back to the Palace, but she knew quite well that he wasn't joking.

_I intend to._

* * *

The City had slipped into a state of heightened paranoia that Glinda would not have thought possible during their revelry over the Witch's death. Every strange shadow flitting across the sidewalk was a flying Monkey swooping down to the City streets to avenge his master, and every unaccountable noise in the night was a rebel Animal come from the West to commit terrible crimes in the Witch's name.

Newspapers reported every scrap of suspicious activity in Oz, no matter what sort, with veiled hints at terrible conspiracies set in motion by the Wicked Witch. Strange lapses in communication with and transport of goods from Munchkinland were noted, exaggerated and taken out of context, and some claimed that the Wicked Witch of the East had cursed the land with her death, that all of the crops now in the ground would be poisoned, that they would wither and die, that a new drought would begin and bring starvation to Oz again.

Privately, Glinda had no patience for any of it, and did not believe a single word. Until late one night, as she studied her law books hopelessly with the window open as usual so that the fresh air might keep her awake, when a dark shape hurtled into her room and crashed motionless to the floor, too quickly for her to even think of crying out.

It was one of the flying Monkeys – the one who had presented her with Elphaba's green bottle in Kiamo Ko, she recalled – and it was badly injured.

He didn't respond to her hesitant attempts to waken him, but his strange, leathery wings unfurled slightly, revealing clearly defined bite marks and nearly-dried blood in the membrane stretched between the elongated bones. Glinda had to wince in sympathy, though the bizarre, mangled creature really was awful to look at. As discreetly as possible, she had a passing maid in the hallway run to fetch the Palace doctor.

"But that's one of those deformed Monkeys – the Witch's familiars!" the doctor said, horrified, when Glinda showed him his patient.

"The Monkeys were as much a victim of the Witch as anyone." Glinda studied the doctor coolly, just long enough to make him squirm, before continuing, "He needs help, and he's going to get it."

So Chistery was brought to the infirmary, had his wounds tended to, and was allowed to rest. Glinda avoided him, out of necessity. It was hard enough to keep the fact that there was a flying Monkey in the Emerald Palace out of the newspapers; if it ever got out that Glinda herself had been associating with him, there would be no end to it.

* * *

It was as if slamming that door behind Boq had woken her from the uneasy dream she'd been having since leaving Kiamo Ko, into a reality which was even worse. She should have thought twice before allowing him here – but the memory of Nessa's cruel death still gnawed at her conscience, and he and Nessa were inextricably linked in her memory, though admittedly that was mostly her own doing. And Boq, damn him, was everything she had been desperate not to let herself be since the Wizard left, plainspoken and unpretentious. It was obvious that he was as harmless as ever, if still a presumptuous pest, but he had brought back every memory that she had fought so hard to keep from giving in to, and though she had managed to keep her composure up to the end, he _had_ to bring up Elphaba, and there was no enduring it.

And when he had gone Glinda hid her face in her hands and sobbed as she hadn't allowed herself to do since the night she had dethroned the Wizard, the day Elphaba was murdered. What was she _doing_? She had gotten herself trapped here, among these maneuvering political jackals, acting just as false and hypocritical as she had done before to earn her best friend's scorn and drive Fiyero away – she _had_ to, in order to keep her promises, didn't she? She didn't have anything else to offer.

If she had just paid a little more attention in history class, if she had practiced sorcery with as much diligence as it required instead of flouncing off to this party and that, if she hadn't allowed herself to be flattered and manipulated into serving people she _knew_ weren't trustworthy. If she had been smarter or braver or less vain, less selfish. If she had only done the right thing to start with, then maybe…

But thoughts like that would cripple her if she allowed them to, and she had no time for grieving. Cultivate detachment, bring the barriers down again. There was a knock at the meeting room door – a convenient distraction – and when she opened it, Tyrrell promptly handed her a letter.

"Your messenger has just returned with this."

So Greylag had finally gotten through. Glinda dismissed Tyrrell and tore open the envelope with more violence than was necessary, trying to drown out the words playing over and over in her mind, Elphie's voice, wistful and intense, _I hope you're happy…_

The letter was not from any Munchkinland official, but it did have a proper seal, as if from an estate – one of the successful farms in the Corn Belt, perhaps. It claimed that though there had been disagreements regarding succession, but that a group of more levelheaded Munchkinlanders was endeavoring to find a solution. Glinda recognized the insipid language of diplomacy, soothing and essentially meaningless, but could not bring herself to care, just now. At last, a problem that someone _else_ would have to solve.


	6. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: BTW I don't own Wicked or anything. Also, I definitely don't own the line in this chapter about Kumbricia - that comes from the Wicked novel, page 176 in my hardcover edition: "Shard by shard she rearranges the world." It's the part of the Oziad that the Wizard recites to Elphaba. Therefore, it belongs to that wise and wily fellow, Gregory Maguire. Also: the spelling/grammar errors in the letter are intentional.

Many thanks to Meltalviel, who, contrary to popular belief, is not a computer but a fabulous beta!

* * *

It was a good thing that the play-noises Teneke's pups made were mostly too high pitched to be noticed over the din of the apartments around Boq's tiny room. Too tired to move, he sat on the floor, leaning back against the tiny cot with his legs stretched out before him, minding the Rat pups while Teneke slept.

Summer here was more unbearable than any he had been used to because of the closeness of the buildings on either side of the narrow streets, blocking any hint of a breeze at ground level and impeding it even on the rooftops. The heavy air inside the apartment made it difficult to breathe, but even if he could manage to force the jammed window open, he wouldn't – not when the sun stewed the waste-filled streets all day so that the pervading reek rose into the evening on shimmering waves of heat. Spending all day mucking out stables was almost a blessing in comparison; at least the pervasive sweet scent of straw and of horses was a familiar one. The pups clambered over his shoes and dared one another to jump off, growing bolder with every second they thought they weren't being watched.

"Careful, Eyal," said Boq, mechanically. "Don't push."

"Oisin pushed first," cried Eyal, and then they were all shoving one another and in danger of falling to the floor – not a long drop for anyone but a three-inch tall Rat – until their mother barked at them to calm down. Then they abruptly fell into a group sulk for a grand total of half a minute before endeavoring to leap from the toe of one shoe to the other.

"When are you going to open that thing?" Teneke asked, of the envelope he had spent all evening staring at. He suspected that she thought this was the same envelope he had been carrying everywhere in the last few weeks, the one with the official seal of the Emerald Palace and his name in Glinda's handwriting. Although he had made up his mind to throw it away at least a dozen times, it always ended up back in his coat pocket somehow, close at hand. And at least for now, he thought wearily, it would probably stay there.

This letter, on the other hand, he had found waiting for him today, when he stopped into the post office on a whim after work. It was from home.

"Right now," he said, not in any particular hurry. "In a moment." Immediately there was a tiny stampede of Rat pups to his side.

"May we help?"

"Please?"

Boq glanced over at Teneke, who had curled up again to sleep in her makeshift nest – the small side pocket of the bag containing his few belongings, padded with shredded paper and scraps of fabric and things she'd gathered – just under the head of the cot.

"Wish you wouldn't," came her muffled voice from somewhere in the shadows. "It's hard enough to teach them what they can and can't bite, now you've got them chewing things on command and before you know it your clothes will all be in shreds and only you to blame."

"I think they know the difference." Boq grinned conspiratorially at the gathered pups, and placed his hand palm-up on the floor behind them so they could climb on. He held them up before him as if they were on a platform in midair. Standing side by side on their hind legs, three of them could easily line up along his hand, with Blikk, the smallest of the litter, jostled off to the side and clinging somewhat bemusedly to Boq's wrist. Very soon they would be too big for this game, and probably think themselves too old for it, but for now…

After his mother had spoken, Eyal appeared to have something to add, but his closest brother tugged on his whiskers for a moment before he could wrench himself free. "Isi bit off a button from your shirt!" he squeaked. There was another outbreak of wrestling and squealing and another sudden silence when Boq briefly cupped his other hand over the one they were standing on. They lined up again neatly as if nothing had happened.

"Honestly, you four. Your mama is trying to sleep. And no one likes a tattletale," Boq told Eyal (who wrung his tail in his paws, repentant). "If you'll all promise to stay quiet, I'll let you help me open the letter."

Each pup in turn covered his mouth with two velvety pink paws to show his compliance. So Boq held the envelope up to them and, all in a row, they gnawed on the top for a few moments, their teeth clicking busily until the envelope was open. Then with another round of barely-muffled squeals, they tumbled out of his hand and onto his shirt front to begin climbing again.

Boq unfolded the letter – it had a few tiny bite-marks taken from the middle, but not much the worse for wear, really – and steeled himself to read it.

_Boq,_

_Your last letter was rather short, I do hope every thing is all right. We are all well though the weather has been worrying, especially for dad who is allready in a state for reasons you know. There's not enough rain to do any good and the heat is something awful. Norin complains constantly but how is that any different than usual really?_

_You need not worry that dad will read your letters. Write what ever you wish. Mama does read them though – she tells me now to remind you to eat. I am not sure how you might forget to eat, but if you are that absent-minded perhaps you'd better write yourself a note just in case._

_The money you sent did arrive safely. _

_We all hope that you will come home soon. And keep yourself well._

_With love – your sister,_

_Abbey_

He released a held breath in a rush. None of it was really surprising. His father was still upset with him; that was to be expected, although the implication that he wasn't even acknowledging Boq's letters was troubling. If the weather in Munchkinland kept up this way, no amount of extra effort would keep the crops from failing, and he was useless here either way. All the guilt and shame he had been fighting off since seeing his sister's familiar handwriting addressed to him returned in force.

He didn't know what to do now. What he thought he wanted, stupid as the delusion had been, wasn't what he thought it was. All that was left was to admit defeat and go home. They would be expecting him, anyway. He could explain what had happened (they had all predicted it before he did, hadn't they?) accept their forgiveness with as much grace as he could muster, and – what? Shoulder to the plough, pretend he had never made such an embarrassing mistake, someday inherit the land from his father and run the farm himself. He could do it. There had been a time when he had even been eager to undertake that responsibility. Even now, he thought, it might turn out all right.

Except – he tossed the letter aside in frustration – _except_ that it meant negating this whole chapter of his life. It meant accepting that his attempt at an education had been useless, quelling his pride and scraping together all he'd learned and failed to learn from the box of schoolbooks gathering dust under his brother's bed, putting it to what little practical use he could. It meant forgetting the things he had seen and the people he had met – the halls of Shiz and the infinite possibilities he had imagined when he arrived there, the more dazzling sights of the Emerald City, and –

Someday, he hoped, he would be ready to let it all go. Right now, the thought alone made him sick. The alternative of staying here wasn't much better, not when the whole City was constantly ringing with talk of Oz's lovely new ruler, no matter how much he tried not to hear it. But he couldn't just leave, not yet; he had to earn enough to pay back the money he'd borrowed from his father, and then enough again to pay his own way home. It would take months, at least.

So once again he was trapped, whatever choice he made, and once again it was his own fault that he hadn't seen it coming.

There was a knock on the door that separated his room from Niel's and, just as they had been taught, the Rat pups abandoned their attempts at climbing up Boq's sleeve and slid to the floor. Teneke leapt up as well, with a farewell nod to Boq, and herded her children into the shadows under the bed, to the crack in the wall through which they came and went. Boq waited until he was sure they had gone before he answered the door.

Bowing just slightly in jovial recognition of Boq's provincial manners (normally Boq would have appreciated the gesture, but the reminder of home in his present mood was rather more disheartening than comforting), Niel launched into his usual eager, direct way of speaking. "Just got home, and with exciting news. Exciting for me, I suppose, and I have to speak to you about it, but first, I've brought you a gift."

Taken aback, Boq stammered "Thank you!" before he had even pulled open the heavy, loosely-wrapped package. Inside he found an ornate hardcover copy of the _Oziad_. He let it fall open, cradling it awkwardly – it was too big to simply hold in one hand – and flipped with growing reverence through the yellowing pages, the elaborate calligraphy and illustrations in soft watercolors. "How – why did you…?"

Niel gave a half-shrug. "You've been a bit under the weather lately, and you've mentioned you like books." He didn't seem to share Boq's awe, and waved off his every attempt at profuse thanks. For this particular book was the most beautiful (and probably the most expensive) thing Boq had ever owned.

"But we have something serious to discuss," Niel said, stepping in from the doorway while Boq arranged the book neatly in the center of the bedside table. "You remember that I have been working and saving in hopes of bringing my family to live here with me, in a shop of my own."

"Of course."

"Well, if things continue in the fortunate direction they are headed, it seems that I will be able to send for them soon."

Boq tried not to look too alarmed. "That's – that's very fortunate, yes. How soon?"

"That's why I wished to speak with you. I've already begun looking into buildings for sale uptown, and found a few that look promising, so it may be very soon indeed. Of course when I move out you are welcome to stay here, if you can manage it, financially."

"Yes," said Boq, faintly. "I mean, no. I don't think I can."

"Well then, don't worry. You'll get as much time as you need to find somewhere else to stay, and if there are any problems I'll see if I can't help you out."

A little dazed with this sudden turn of events, Boq could only nod, in what he hoped was an appropriately grateful sort of way. Niel appeared satisfied by this response and changed the subject at full speed.

"Have you been reading the newspapers, by the way?"

"Not regularly."

"You have family somewhere in Wend Hardings, is that right?"

"In Rush Margins," Boq said. "Why?"

"Good, I suppose they'd be well out of it. My wife is staying with her parents in Nest Fallows; she wrote me about some kind of – well, a laborers' uprising, I suppose. Debates about succession. Growing unrest. There's some fear of fighting breaking out, she says; may the Unnamed God forbid it. This is all hearsay, it hasn't been in the papers here yet – though it will be, any day now, with more details, I'm sure."

This was all news to Boq. Nest Fallows was nearer to the Corn Basket and the seat of affluence in Munchkinland, far away from the more humble situation of most of Wend Hardings. Any trouble could easily stay well away from there, and he fervently hoped it would. It was bad enough being caught here in this snare of his own making, without having his family in danger and nothing he could do about it.

As Niel turned to go, his foot jarred some small debris on the floor. "Oh," he said, and leaned to pick it up. "Is this your button?"

Hiding a grin, Boq checked the front of his shirt and found a missing button towards the bottom, threads still hanging frayed from being chewed by rodent teeth. "I must have lost it."

* * *

It was easy, for the most part, to keep his thoughts outside himself; there was enough to distract him, that was certain. Oran delighted in heckling him while he tried to work; the stablemaster possessed a sixth sense about how to get under his employees' skin, and a significant amount of his approval for their work seemed to come from how easy it was to fluster them with his merciless teasing. He had latched onto the change in Boq's demeanor immediately and set about the game of finding out what had caused it.

"Pining for someone you left at home," he guessed shrewdly. "A pretty little ewe of yours, is that right? Your own special pet?"

One of the grooms snickered, probably less from amusement and more from relief that he wasn't Oran's current target. Boq only bit his tongue and focused on the harness he was polishing.

But at night, he had time to think more honestly about things than he had allowed himself to do before. Even after many weeks and many sleepless nights, nothing grew any clearer.

Nessa had been either a desperate and lonely girl who wanted him to love her and knew he never would, or she had been a ruthless tyrant with no regard for the people she ruled. He knew firsthand that she had been both, and often at the same time, to chilling contrast; the cruelest things she'd done were done with the intent of finally securing his attention, and he had seen the hope shining in her eyes as she signed law after unjust law that would make it impossible for him to leave her. So then, had Elphaba been a dangerous criminal trying to undermine societal order or, as she'd claimed, had she been unfairly maligned? Could it be that, like Nessa, she had been both? Even Fiyero had betrayed Glinda and the Wizard, hadn't he, but he'd done it to help Elphaba, and if the things the Wizard had said about Elphaba _were_ lies…

There was no way to come to a conclusion; he didn't know enough to do more than reason in circles, and that only served to give him a headache.

And even Glinda wasn't who he'd thought she was – or rather she was exactly who he'd thought she was, on the outside, but with far more depth than he would ever have guessed at. They really hadn't been very close in school, as awful as it was for him to admit it.

And what was he? What had he thought _he_ was? How could he ever have expected to win Glinda's attention? The very fact that it had always been so difficult to get to speak to her through her legions of admirers should have been enough – add to that the fact that she had never been particularly interested in what he had to say… And why should she be? What had he ever had to say to her that was of interest, anyway?

In his new state of clarity, the scope of his own folly was overwhelming, almost sickening. He had been behaving like a silly child, as if he hadn't grown up at all since leaving Shiz. Surely if he had stopped for a moment to think, he would have realized that. Not for a moment should he have imagined that he could have any claim to her.

But then – he couldn't stop the small, stubborn voice in the back of his mind from wondering – why_ shouldn't_ he? Had things gone differently – if he had been bolder in trying to win her attention, if Fiyero hadn't come along when he did, if Nessa hadn't sunk her claws into him so thoroughly before he even realized it, if he'd just had more _time_ – then might he have had a chance? Could he still have had a chance, if the course of events hadn't once more run against him?

He would never know. And it was that tiny, flickering light of hope, refusing to be quenched despite his best efforts, which kept him in such misery.

* * *

It was difficult to feel truly melancholy, even after a long day, with four boisterous Rat pups constantly climbing up his sleeves, pulling his hair, and attempting to gnaw more buttons off his shirt when they thought he wasn't looking. They reminded him of him and his brothers climbing trees when they were children, constantly daring one another to risk their necks by climbing highest, occasionally getting stuck and needing to be rescued. And for added peril, this particular tree was ticklish.

They spent nearly every evening like this, in easy companionship – the only part of his day that Boq really looked forward to. After sharing a simple meal with his guests, he would take the time to write home – although mail from the Emerald City to Munchkinland was never certain, he didn't want to fall out of contact with his family ever again, even for a little while – or to read from the book Niel had given him, always keeping an eye on the pups so that Teneke could relax. As soon as it began to grow dark, the Rats would disappear back into the wall for the night. Teneke had never mentioned where the building's Rat population nested, and he was glad of it; since Animals were forbidden to live outside their appointed district, it seemed wise for him to turn a blind eye as much as possible.

"Did you fall asleep, Boq?" whispered a particularly whiskery Rat pup into his ear, interrupting his reading.

"Why? Do I look like I'm asleep?" Boq whispered back, without turning his head. He didn't want to upset Blikk from his perch.

"You're staying still."

"Some people are known to do that on occasion, yes."

"I see," said Blikk, wisely.

When they'd bored of using Boq as playground equipment, the pups trampled their way down to the floor to begin a game of catch, with a button in place of a ball. As usual, little Blikk was shoved to the sidelines, despite his eager attempts to join in. In a moment a scuffle had broken out, with the bigger brothers all ganging up to pin a squealing Blikk to the ground. Furtively, Boq leaned down to let Blikk scramble up onto his hand and out of the fray.

"That's cheating!" accused Oisin, appalled.

"He's right, Boq, as I am certain I've told you before," came Teneke's stern tone from her nest. Boq winced; he'd _thought_ she'd been sleeping. Glad to have been rescued, Blikk made his way to the tabletop and around the open _Oziad_ to the inkwell, while his brothers lost interest just as quickly, falling into a game of keep-away.

"I just wish you wouldn't let him be bullied so much," Boq said quietly to Teneke.

"They know what they're doing."

"So do I," he muttered; "they're bullying him."

"It's a good thing you're not a Rat, is all I can say to you," Teneke said, gently. "Those of us as can learn our lessons early are the lucky ones."

Having liberated the quill from the inkwell, nibbling the already-shredded feather tip with delight, Blikk turned his attention back to Boq. With some interest, he watched him turn a page, and asked, "What's that you've got?"

"It's a book."

"Oh. What's it do?"

"It doesn't really do anything."

"So why are you watching it?"

"I'm not _watching_ it," Boq said, a little mystified by this sudden curiosity.

"Oh. So what're you doing?"

"Reading."

"What's that?"

"What is what?"

"Reading, what's reading?"

"It's… well…" Boq fumbled for an explanation. "These marks on the pages, they represent sounds – words – and if you can put them together, you can understand them. Does that make any sense?"

"No," Blikk said simply, wide-eyed.

"It's as if the book is talking to you, but you have to learn its language first."

Contemplating this new angle, Blikk groomed his ears vigorously to give himself time to think. "I see," he concluded. "Talking to books."

This wasn't as easy as he had anticipated. "Not exactly. It's a little more complicated than this, but – it's not the book you're talking to – it's the person who made it. Sort of. Or I suppose it's more like the person who made the book is talking to the person who reads it."

"Someone made marks in a book just so you could read it?"

"Well, not just for_me_," Boq said, noting that Blikk looked a little disappointed at that. "It's for anyone who happens to find the book."

"Oh!" Suddenly Blikk straightened up, his eyes alight with real understanding. "Like smells, but with words!"

Just barely choking back a laugh, Boq answered, as gravely as possible, "I suppose you could think of it that way."

He sat very still while Blikk climbed back up his arm to perch on his shoulder again, from which distance he could take in the full spread of the pages more easily. "I could talk to other Rats with smells," Blikk sighed, "but I couldn't talk to books with words."

"Of course you could, if you knew how. Teneke," – there was a good-natured grumbling from the nest in response – "How long will it be until they can learn to read?"

He could never be quite sure about the development rate of the Rat pups. Only a few weeks old, and they were already having conversations with Boq as sophisticated as this one – something like the level of a five or six year old human child, yet different, somehow; far more focused. Four weeks ago they hadn't been speaking at all; it wouldn't be long before they were adults by Rat standards. It was really amazing, when he stopped to think about it.

"They won't learn at all from me; I don't read."

"No? Do you mind if I teach them, then?"

"Don't see why you'd bother. Like as not it's the only book they'll ever see. Seems there en't space enough between their ears already for the things that matter, without filling it up with nonsense."

Chastened, Blikk lowered his voice so that his mother couldn't hear. "I like nonsense."

"So do I," Boq whispered back.

Emerging from her makeshift nest and climbing stiffly up to join Blikk on Boq's shoulder, Teneke peered down at the _Oziad_. It was opened to one of the lovely pastel illustrations, a bleaker one than most, of Kumbricia stalking across the world in her mythic quest to rearrange things to her liking, shard by shard. It easily captured the dark mood of the passage it depicted.

"Hmph," Teneke said, apparently unmoved. "Suppose you're free to teach as long as they care to learn. And now it's getting late," she said over Blikk's squeal of triumph, loudly enough that the others could hear, "and we must all leave you to your sleep."

"Must we?" Isi asked plaintively, holding Eyal back by his tail, so that he couldn't snatch the button from a taunting Oisin.

"Master Boq has put up with enough of your mischief today, I think."

"I really don't mind if you stay," Boq said quietly.

"Ah, no. We'll get out of your hair. I've no wish to wear out our welcome. Say goodbye, all of you, and let's go, all in a line, stay together now – and _no biting_, Isi –!"

With that, they were gone. Sighing, Boq snapped the book shut on the image of Kumbricia and wished that it didn't get dark here quite so early.


	7. Chapter 6

Note: You know, when I started posting this story I had a prologue and two chapters written, and I thought "well that will be enough to keep me ahead so I can have a regular updating schedule!" ... _ha_. ... so, um, I'm really sorry that I am so slow. ;-; I love writing this story but I also do not want it to be bad, so I agonize over it maybe more than I should.

This chapter is unbetaed (lovely Mel gets a break -throws hearts at her- ), so please feel free to be the first one to gleefully point out any mistakes and/or problems!

And just as a **warning**, this chapter ends up a bit dark and you maybe shouldn't read it when you're not in the mood for such things! -so vague-

* * *

After Niel moved out, Boq took full advantage of the newfound space, moving the makeshift classroom to the kitchen where they could sit near the stove. Every evening he would leave the _Oziad_ lying carefully open on the table while he made dinner for the Rats, who weren't at all picky, mercifully, and didn't mind that meals often came out slightly overcooked. The pups picked up reading as quickly as they did everything else. Eyal, Isi, and Oisin had gotten the hang of sounding out words within a few weeks and then bored of the whole idea, only visiting for dinner and barely saying hello before leaving again for what Teneke, with a knowing shake of her head, called roving.

But Blikk wasn't satisfied until he could read aloud as smoothly as Boq did, and then not until he could copy down the alphabet in rows of small spindly letters, writing with the tip of a quill pen he had chewed down to manageable size. After he had mastered that, he would sit on Boq's shoulder instead and read with him, instinctively enraptured by a story full of places and creatures and people he didn't understand. At first, he asked so many questions they got through only a page or two at a time, but then he simply settled in, absorbing everything in his wide-eyed way. The pages were turned. When there were no more left, the book was closed. Blikk said goodbye just as he always did, and left.

Only Teneke still faithfully visited every day. As far as Boq could tell, she was entirely unconcerned about the sudden dispersal of her children. It was getting on into autumn, and although Boq embraced the change in the weather, Teneke seemed to feel the cold more than he did. The little stove didn't do much to heat the room, but if they sat close enough to it, she was more talkative and less inclined to curl up into a ball and nap after dinner.

"Do you see the pups much during the day?" he asked one evening, as they finished a pleasantly edible meal.

Teneke paused in the act of putting her fur back in order after vigorously grooming her whiskers clean. "They en't pups anymore, are they? They are full-grown bucks by now."

Of course they were. Much too soon, he thought, unable to resist feeling a little forlorn. He frowned, but tried to hide it, pushing the remaining bits of burnt macaroni and cheese around his plate with his fork. "They haven't come by to visit in a while."

"Ah, young bucks have their own concerns – finding young does that don't smell so familiar, mostly. They strike out for new places as soon as they can slip away. I am shocked they en't left sooner. I thought I'd never see them raised."

He stopped picking at his food and stared at her. "They aren't coming back, you mean? They just left without saying goodbye?"

Teneke narrowed her eyes. "They did, or else I will find them out and shred their ears, for I taught them better manners than that!"

"No, I meant – they said goodbye, but not goodbye for good. They didn't tell me they weren't coming back."

"Well, how could they have known?" Teneke asked, as if that should have been obvious.

Sometimes Boq despaired of following her logic, no matter how simple she made it seem. He steered the conversation onto a less confusing path. "Do you think they're still together?"

"Could be. It's not unheard of. What are you so worried for?"

"I don't know. I suppose I felt partly responsible for them. And I didn't expect them to be gone so soon."

"Ah. Active young pups are better company than old Teneke. You have been lonely of late."

His breath caught painfully at the sudden statement of a truth he would never have allowed himself to admit. Keeping his tone as casual as he could manage, he asked, "Why would you say that?"

"I smelled it the first time I brought the pups out to see you."

"And you never thought to ask about it?"

"What I thought was that it en't my place to stick my nose where it's not wanted. You will either tell me or you will not."

Boq opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and looked away. By her mere presence, she made his problems seem so trivial he was embarrassed for having them at all. What was his self-made bad luck in the face of the life she led? He didn't exactly enjoy living here in this shabby tenement, but _he_ wasn't forced to live in the walls and steal food to survive, and he wasn't in constant danger because of what he was. And then, of course, it was his own fault he was here in the first place.

Seeing that he did not intend to answer, she crossed the tabletop and put one paw on his hand in an almost maternal gesture. "Well, you're in one piece, so it can't be that bad. And it won't do anyone any good to sit here moping. You have the comfort of a full belly; now get some sleep, and forget about it. No point fretting over something done and gone."

"I wish it were that easy."

"It is," she said gently.

She was so certain about it that he couldn't bring himself to argue. And maybe it was true for her. He would like to be able to simply go to sleep and wake up new and separate from his worries. Nessa had never been able to let go, not of her sister, not of her father, not of Boq, and look where that had gotten her… But he shied away from that thought with a familiar twist of guilt.

Still, whatever Teneke might say, he would feel better about the whole thing if he had at least had a chance to wish the young Rats luck in life.

* * *

So when Boq was wandering slowly home after work and caught a furtive flurry of movement from an alleyway out of the corner of his eye, he thought of the roving Rats, and dodged off the crowded sidewalk to investigate. The alley was separated by a brick wall, too tall for him to see over, halfway down its length, with an apartment building on either side; above his head, clotheslines spanned the distance between opposite windows. His way was blocked by overturned trash cans and a blanket of unidentifiable half-rotted garbage thrown from the apartments above – not the sort of place he'd like to stroll through, except that the movement he'd seen was definitely alive, and neither a Rat nor a rat, but something Canine and very young, wearing a drooping yellow bow around her neck. She was hiding, just shielded from view by part of a discarded umbrella, and when she glanced one way and another as if checking that the way was clear, she spotted Boq and ducked back down, her deep blue eyes wide with terror.

"What are you lurking about for?" asked a gruff voice. Boq spun around and was faced with a disheveled, bearded man, squinting down at him with barely disguised hostility.

"I wasn't," he said, startled.

"Well, then get moving." With the pretense of patting his shoulder in a patronizing fashion, the man shoved Boq back toward the crowd.

Boq started to argue – to point out the young Animal, whatever it was – but stopped himself. What business did this man have in questioning him? As far as he knew, there were no laws against looking down alleyways, and anyway if there were, a Guard would be the one to reprimand him for it, not some unpleasant civilian. So he veered into the crowd again, walked all the way around the block and found the other end of the same alley. It was easy enough to scramble up over the wall; while he paused at the top, he spotted the Animal – a Coyote, he guessed, but so young it was difficult to tell at first – picking her way back towards the wall, keeping close to the ground. Every aspect of her body language indicated that she was in a state of extreme distress. And there was no good reason for her to be here all alone. She must have gotten lost, or separated from her parents somehow – the Animal district was near enough that she could have simply wandered off.

As he watched, she slunk up to the base of the wall and seemed to disappear. Sure that he was somehow mistaken, Boq leaned forward, searching, until a rustling sound behind him made it clear that she had gone through a garbage-concealed culvert and come out the other side. When he slid off the top of the wall and dropped to the ground behind her, she panicked and dived into an overturned trash can.

He kicked aside some odds and ends to make enough room to crouch down and blink into the trash can until he could discern the poor Animal from her surroundings.

"Hey," he said softly. "Are you lost?"

She was panting audibly, covered in soot and who knew what else. At the sound of his voice, her ears swiveled back and forth, but she made no attempt to reply. Perhaps she was too young to speak.

Boq tried again. "What's your name?"

Her eyes were blank not with incomprehension but with fear, Boq was certain of it. Even if she _could_ understand him, she wouldn't answer. But if she wouldn't be coaxed out, he would have to find a Guard to report this to – he didn't quite feel comfortable with the idea of getting her out by force, and she couldn't be left here all alone. Still – he had not forgotten the role of the Wizard's Guards in the unofficial occupation of Munchkinland – in Fiyero's death – in any number of rumored injustices only whispered about, for fear of reprisal. It might have been unfair of him, but he would rather not trust a Guard with a child's safety if he could avoid it. The Animal district wasn't far away, if only he could get her to come with him, and someone in that relatively insular community should be able to tell him where she was supposed to be. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was all he could think of, so he kept at it.

"Can you tell me where your mama is?"

At that she gave a little whimper and huddled lower.

"Why don't you come out, and we'll find your parents and get you home?"

There was no response at all, so he reached to the back of the trash can and scooped her up carefully, cradling her to his chest. She went limp, trembling, still afraid but too exhausted to fight. To put her more at ease, he hid her under his coat, mostly blocking her from view.

Although it was getting later and the crowd of workers on their way home was thinning out, when Boq had doubled back and passed the mouth of the alley again, the man who had accosted him was still loitering around there, shrouded in cigarette smoke, affecting disinterest. He seemed to be waiting for something, and was at pains not to look it. Boq sped up to avoid being seen, glad that he had thought to hide the Coyote kit. She had fallen asleep almost right away, still shaking pitifully; he adjusted her carefully in his arms to make sure she was comfortable.

The streets nearest the areas frequented by humans had been deserted. Stories of past violence were written all over the abandoned buildings, in the hateful anti-Animal graffiti, the smashed-in windows and splintered doors. Beyond that, the Animal district was no less shabby than his own neighborhood, but it was older, predating the construction of the upper end of the City; the streets were wider and unpaved, and the crumbling buildings had fewer stories. Even so, the residents had made attempts to brighten things up: flowers in nearly every window, faded wreaths hung for luck above shop entrances, scraggly but well-tended trees on street corners. The sky felt more open here, a very welcome change.

Boq stood out, for a change, in a crowd that was otherwise made up entirely of Animals, and although he was noticed immediately as he made his way down the sidewalk, no one would approach. An elderly Raccoon, in the act of climbing a rope ladder up to a second-story window, paused to stare at him. A mother Armadillo shooed her children hastily away. He hadn't even considered it, but it probably did look suspicious from their perspective – a human walking into the Animal district without apparent reason.

The door of a small grocery just behind him opened, and out shuffled a giant Tortoise, muttering to himself and staring severely at the bag of carrots he'd just purchased. "Excuse me," Boq said politely.

The Tortoise's gaze snapped upward; he stared at Boq for a moment, then narrowed his watery eyes. "Did Glinda send you?"

That was the last thing he'd expected to hear. Boq stammered, "Glinda? I – no, I wasn't – I'm just –" It was shameful, how wrong-footed he was just by the mention of her name. He forced himself to gather his thoughts. "No, I only wanted to know if there is a family of Coyotes nearby. Because you see, I found this young one hiding alone in the City, and I thought –"

A wave of frantic whispering arose, startling him; a crowd had begun forming when his back was turned, and now he was penned in as they all tried to get a glimpse of the kit. More Animals were making their way down the street to find out what the commotion was about.

"Not _alone_, surely?" asked the lady Armadillo he had seen earlier.

Another voice from the crowd hissed, "So soon –"

"What else did you expect?"

"Someone should tell Rennara, she's been fretting all day –"

"Go on, and hurry," the Tortoise said. He turned to Boq again, and raised his voice so that everyone might hear. "You're sure she was quite alone when you found her?"

It dawned on Boq that _he_ was the one the crowd was focused on, not the kit – and they weren't pleased. He could hear more whispering, but it was further away now, while the Animals immediately surrounding him were still, intent, expectant. "Of course," he managed uncertainly. He felt a sudden need to defend himself, to explain, but his voice faltered under the scrutiny of the looming, unsympathetic faces. "I just –"

"Speak up," urged the Tortoise, not unkindly.

"I just thought it would be better to bring her myself, than to leave her, or – I didn't mean to cause any –" He cut himself off with a deep breath. No one looked particularly convinced, and yet he still had no idea what he had done wrong. "I asked her how she'd gotten there, and where her parents were, but she wouldn't tell me, or else she didn't know," he finished doggedly. The increased confusion the words evoked from the Animals all around him did nothing to ease his nerves.

There was a parting of the crowd as a lady Coyote in a gaudy sun-hat pushed her way through. "Kaiya!" she called out, her voice breaking. "Oh, Kaiya, it _is_ you!" Little Kaiya's ears perked up at the sound of a familiar voice. Boq was relieved to finally hand her over, but the Coyote stared at him as he did so with her teeth bared and fear in her eyes. Cradling the kit as if expecting Boq to snatch her away again, the Coyote demanded, through an involuntary snarl, "Where is my sister?"

"Excuse me?"

"I told her not to go, I _told_ her!" she went on, her eyes still on Boq, but speaking now to the empty air. "But she was sure, she was _sure_ – and Kaiya so sick – and she wouldn't wait, she wouldn't. She wouldn't listen." Finally an Otter put a paw around her trembling shoulders and led her away. No one else seemed willing to touch her, even drawing away instinctively as she passed. In the uneasy silence that followed, a low, rumbling growl could be heard from further down the street; it spurred the other Animals to action.

The Tortoise gave a fearful hiss. "Whose brilliant notion was it to tell _Oebron_ about this?"

Someone else argued, "He had as much right to know as she did."

"And what do you think will happen to us, if we let him do as he pleases?"

"No worse than what's happening now!"

Boq was too busy to listen closely, instead staring at the approaching Bear, who had just turned the corner, massive and shaggy with a rolling gait that made his strength and power obvious even from this distance. Before he knew what was happening, several Animals had leapt forward to lead, drag, and push him in the opposite direction. He got the idea quickly enough, and as soon as he had found his senses he began to run. A Hare matched his pace, striding alongside him just long enough to comment, almost cheerfully, "Ah, if you only knew how lucky you were!"

* * *

When he told her about it that evening, Teneke had no more insight on the disturbing series of events than he had. "Even bigger Animals must take care when traveling, I expect, let alone us little frail ones," she reasoned. "And out going alone among humans, with a child, no less – strikes me as a dizzy sort of notion. Can't see why they'd take it out on you."

Shuddering, Boq could not avoid remembering the fearsome noise the Bear made as he approached. Judging by their haste to get him out of there, the other Animals had obviously suspected that he was going to take it out on Boq. But surely _that_ was a misunderstanding – the Bear hadn't heard his side of the story yet. Perhaps he ought to have stayed to explain. Boq could not even be sure the fear he'd felt was justified. The fact that the Bear had only growled, without actually speaking, had unsettled him more than it should have.

While he put away the dinner dishes, Teneke bruxed contentedly on the table behind him, her eyes closed and whiskers twitching, in no hurry to disrupt the peace of a good meal. When he had finished, she rose with careful movements and stretched, wearily. "You have had a busy day, and I shouldn't keep you."

Without really expecting her to relent – she had never done so before – he offered, "You can stay here, if you'd like."

"Thank you, and I think I will," she sighed, without a moment's hesitation.

It was a cool night, but not quite cold enough to warrant pulling his cot in front of the stove to sleep. He was comfortable just curled up under a thin blanket, but he let Teneke crawl just inside his sleeve to nestle alongside his arm where she would be warmer. Her fur brushed against his skin as she breathed her little quick breaths, but he was too tired to let such a little thing keep him awake. As the city sounds outside shifted from their daily patterns to the relative hush of nighttime, they both drifted off to sleep.

The moonlight in the room had barely shifted, but it seemed like hours had passed when he opened his eyes again, wondering vaguely what could have disturbed him.

"Boq," Teneke was saying. "I do hate to wake you, but I have to say goodbye."

"What?" he murmured. "Where are you going? I told you, you don't have to leave."

"I en't leaving unless you ask me to. Just saying goodbye."

"… _What_?" he tried again. This wasn't making any sense. Was he dreaming? He moved to rub his eyes before realizing she had vacated his sleeve, and was huddling instead at the edge of the cot, shivering. Even viewed in the dim light, something in her expression made him sit up, fully awake.

"I'd have left without bothering you, but you did get hurt when they didn't tell you they weren't coming back."

"What's wrong?"

Once she had spoken of the loss of half her litter with such unflinching acceptance he had been taken aback by it, but that had been nothing compared to when she told him now, in the same tone: "Nothing, but I am going to die."

"_No_," Boq said, much louder than he had intended. The words set his mind racing so fast he felt lightheaded, disconnected. He blinked into the darkness, trying to regain his footing. "No, you're – but you're not hurt. Are you sick? You should have told me, then I would've –"

"I en't sick."

"I'll bring you to a doctor." This late at night, would anyone be awake to help? He slid out of bed, careful not to jar her, and fumbled with his coat before managing to put it on. "Look, you can hide in my pocket, you'll be warm and no one will see you –"

"Not a doctor left in this city will treat an Animal, let alone a Rat. And I en't sick, I tell you."

Perhaps a hospital wouldn't turn her away, but did he have enough to pay for it? He dug through his knapsack to count out his meager store of barter tokens. "I'll _make_ them treat you – I'll kick down doors if necessary. You should have _told_ me –"

"Boq, settle down," she interrupted, gently.

He stopped. What money he had gathered slipped from his trembling fingers, clinking uselessly back into the bag. Wavering, he forced himself to look at her.

She hadn't even raised her head, regarding him with one dark eye. "If I had known it would upset you, I wouldn't have said anything."

"Wouldn't _upset_ me?" he cried, his voice rising again of its own accord.

"Ah, don't, don't," she soothed, her ears turned back. "I can leave, if you would prefer."

"No!" He went back to her, cupped his hands over her to shield her from the cold. He hardly knew what he was saying. "I just – why? Why?"

With a soft laugh, she patted his hand as if nothing was wrong. "I am old, if you'll believe it or not. Fifty-three months –"

Tears stung his eyes, angry, and he protested, "That isn't old! You've hardly even –!"

"Very old," she went on sternly. "A very long life. And my last litter is raised, and I am tired, and now I am going to rest, if you don't mind."

"But I…" The words, whatever they would have been, were cut off as his throat tightened with the rush of emotion. Once again her simple logic was beyond his understanding. It would be pointless to argue, and disrespectful besides. He gathered her up as gently as he could and cradled her against his chest.

"Nothing to worry about, nothing to fear," she told him softly, lilting, quiet, almost a song despite her plain, modest voice. "No reason to cry – no reason at all." But then he couldn't help it.

"I'm sorry," he told her again and again, not knowing why, really, except that there was nothing else to say.

Quietly, gracefully, as if there was nothing the matter at all, Teneke curled into a ball and went to sleep.


	8. Chapter 7

Four days later – long and silent days though they were, he couldn't keep from counting – Boq received a rare letter from home. The handwriting was his mother's; he was grieved to see that aside from her usual household news and admonitions for him to take care of himself, there was a mention of the rising conflict Niel had alerted him to before. Although he was vague on the details, he gathered that the question of succession was still a contentious one – and for his mother to take enough notice of politics to comment, the situation must have been worrying indeed.

Slipped into the envelope alongside the letter was a scrap of paper with an additional note.

_No one else wants to worry you, so they won't say anything, but I think you'd better come home. Whatever dad might seem to think, he'd prefer having you here safe to having a debt repaid._

_- Farran_

Boq frowned at his brother's message, turned it over to make sure there was nothing more on the back, then read it again, wondering what he had missed. Or was it Farran who was mistaken – misinterpreting? Anyway _he_ wouldn't think of returning before he had amassed the last of the money he owed, preferably with interest. After all he had put his parents through, to fail in that would be unthinkable. Especially in light of the increasing turmoil at home, likely to have an economic impact in the future if it hadn't already. No; as much as he looked forward to it, he was not going back just yet.

It was hard to fill the empty evening hours. He had decided early on that newspapers were an unnecessary expense as long as he was living here; besides, at first he couldn't bear to do much more than skim the headlines as long as every other article found an excuse to mention Glinda, whether or not she was the subject of the story.

Now, though, desperate for any source of distraction, he scrutinized every inch of text in every paper he could get his hands on. Most of it was of little comfort: sensationalist rants about the constant threat of attack by rebel Animals, a few unspecific references to the rumored fighting in Munchkinland, and unnecessary invocations of the Wicked Witch – _Elphaba_, he kept correcting himself with a shake of his head – usually when arguing for the need to keep the City constantly on guard (and in fear, they seemed to imply).

But here and there, he found news that made him pause. Some of the changes Glinda had made were being questioned. He would say _criticized_, except for the strangely roundabout way in which it was always phrased: somewhat hesitant, as vaguely as possible, as if afraid of retaliation. She had rescinded the most severe of the Animal travel banns, making it legal for Animals to go wherever they pleased without restriction and, in theory at least, without obstruction; it was rumored that the housing banns would be next to go. Although the criticism was faint, the praise for these moves, from what he could gather, was nonexistent. For all that his breath still caught at the unexpected sight of her name, the shock had become infused with a grim hope. At least he had been right about one thing: Glinda would be good for the people of Oz, whether most of them liked it or not.

When he had first arrived he had cheered himself through any disappointment by considering how close he was to seeing Glinda again. Now his thoughts wandered constantly to worries about politics, here and at home, while Glinda was not a subject to be considered too closely. He fretted through most of the night, instead of sleeping, and fretted as he sped to Oran's stables before the sun rose. All through his daily tasks he fretted. Grooms came and went quickly here; several sets had come and gone in the last few months. There was no one to talk to, so he worked by himself, lost in unquiet thoughts.

How many of the Animals he had encountered were just like Teneke – as decent and normal as any human he had ever met, denied everything for no reason other than fear? There were so many of them struggling to survive in the City, many more than he had expected. But it made sense. Where else would they go? The Emerald City was their home. If they gave it up and left, they might eke out a living for themselves on the farms to the West or in Munchkinland – as laborers, servants, little better than beasts of burden. Some would say they should be glad for the opportunity. But why should they be expected to debase themselves willingly?

Simply because they were Animals. It had been so much easier to deal with injustice when he was learning about it from the safety of a classroom.But then, he remembered, the classroom hadn't been as safe for Dr. Dillamond, had it?

Boq led a horse to the middle of the airy stable and handed it off to one of the new grooms to be looked over, while he raked out the empty stall.

"You got the wrong brush," the groom said to his friend.

The second groom scowled, evidently in a foul mood, and turned on Boq. "Go fetch him the proper brush; make yourself useful."

He just managed to bite back a rude reply. It would do no one any good to start an argument, he reasoned, and it wouldn't hurt to do as he was told. On his way back from the supply room, he heard Oran coming down the stairs from his living quarters to inspect the day's work. Inwardly he braced himself for the day's spate of relentless mockery. If he kept out of the way, perhaps he would not even be noticed.

"Hear about the latest Animal dead?" the first groom asked.

Oran folded his arms, impassive but listening keenly. "I have not."

"A young one again; a Coyote, they're saying."

"And no one is taking credit for it?"

"Not publicly, yet, though I can't say why. Not as if anyone with a shred of sense wouldn't thank them for a job well done."

"They have been effective, I will say that. No witnesses and not one mention in the papers. No one could sniff out the ones involved if they wanted to."

Boq had stopped in the doorway, clutching the retrieved brush in shock and trying not to believe what he was hearing. The groom motioned at him with a mix of annoyance and confusion. "What's taking you so long?"

The desire to remain beneath notice was fading. Boq took an uncertain step towards the three men, focusing more on holding his temper than on completing his errand.

"What's that?" Oran asked smoothly, sensing an opportunity to rattle him. "Don't you agree it was fine work they did?"

Before he could stop himself, he blurted, "You can't really think that!"

"Can't we? Perhaps the poor Animals should have stayed in their own holes instead of poking their noses out where they don't belong."

"They have the right to go wherever they want!" Once more he made an effort to calm down, staring at the floor and taking a deep breath. He went on in what he hoped was a more rational tone. "The banns were lifted, and even if they hadn't been, they would have the right to – to mind their own business without being attacked."

The second groom had fixed Boq with a suspicious stare. "You're one of those flea-bitten Animal sympathizers, aren't you?"

"_Yes_," Boq said hotly.

"It's people like you who make it easy for them to slink in and undermine us, you little rat."

That last epithet cut deeper than the groom could have anticipated. All attempts at rationality abandoned, Boq responded by hurling the brush at his head. It missed, by a small margin, but the groom swore broadly anyway. Shaking with rage, Boq felt ready to take on all three of them at once if he had to, and braced himself as the groom advanced, fists raised.

Oran stepped between them, all seriousness once again. "All right, all right. You are spooking my horses and I'll thank you to keep your voices down."

"Damn all your horses!" Boq nearly shouted. "I'm leaving!"

For once even the raucous Oran was stunned into silence.

Unsettled by the commotion, the horses were indeed beginning to stamp and snort; Boq glared at them, too, on his way out. It was still quite early, and he had to weave his way through many weary work-bound pedestrians to get away. As the rush of anger faded, he found himself shaking, his thoughts racing both from what he had done and what he had heard. A Coyote had been killed – Kaiya's mother. The Animals had known it was not an accident, because it had happened before. That was why they had greeted him with such fear and suspicion. And such rage, on the Bear's part.

And now because of his loss of composure he would have to find himself another job. He certainly wasn't going back _there_.

He was disgusted with himself, with everything. This was _enough_. Never mind what his parents would think, never mind his own endless string of stupid mistakes. _Never mind Glinda_, he thought fiercely, although his heart twisted with the sudden unexpected severing. He couldn't stay here anymore. As soon as he was able, he was going home.

The thought did little to soothe him, but it did allow him to settle into an eerie sort of calm. At least now something was going to change.

For the first half of that night, he listened half-awake to a conversation he couldn't quite make out, from somewhere several rooms over. The darkness shifted around him. Something wasn't right. Without apparent reason, a sense of dread gripped him. He opened his eyes to the sight of a dark shape standing over him: the wraithlike form of Nessa as he had last seen her, lurching unsteadily, her eyes burning with desperate ferocity. She reached for him, and…

With a strangled cry he started awake, tangled in the sheets, his heart pounding in his ears.

He sensed rather than saw that the room was empty. Sitting up, he stared wide-eyed into the darkness, letting his vision adjust. He tried to relax, and to keep from closing his eyes and seeing those unnatural eyes again, as if they had been burned into his brain. It was only a nightmare, of course; brought on by stress, and no wonder. Even as he thought it, he resisted a childish urge to make a warding sign against wraiths. As a child, he had been scolded more than once for frightening his siblings into sleeplessness with tellings of folk tales that had often begun in exactly this way. A wraith would appear to warn someone of his impending death or misfortune, and when the omen was foolishly ignored – as it usually was in such stories – that someone ended up dead, or else mutilated in one of many gruesome ways that he had taken pride in making up and describing in full detail. But that was all silly superstition he had left behind long ago.

For all that, his pulse was still racing. The night was too quiet, the stillness too strained. Bitterly, he wished for Teneke – to tell him, in her gentle voice, to stop being so dramatic, that it did no one any good –

It was no use. He felt so sick and feverish, and now so achingly alone, that he couldn't stand the empty room for another minute, ghosts or no. He put on his coat and went out. The cool night air would calm him down.

It wasn't as quiet out here – not in the midst of the city – but still there was a dampening hush over everything. Winter was waiting above like a held breath. Boq pulled his coat tighter around him and wished that it would just snow and be done with it. The streets were mostly deserted, this early in the morning. Dawn was some way off, but a few carriages were already rattling by, pulled by horses that seemed as sleepy as their drivers, on their way to pick up morning deliveries of newspapers or groceries for the rich citizens of the upper end. Turning down one street and another aimlessly, Boq headed toward the commercial districts with the vague idea that there would be more people there.

He slowed outside a café from which a conversation was just audible, wishing he could go inside for a cup of mineral tea. Except for his knife and that ever-present letter, the wax seal worn down nearly flat beneath his fingers, his pockets were empty – probably for the best, traveling alone at night like this…

One of the voices from inside, deep and gravelly enough to carry through the front window of the café even when lowered in a gruff whisper, broke through his thoughts. He couldn't remember where or even if he had heard it before, but it sounded familiar, and it made him want to leave without knowing why. He was glad he hadn't gone past the window, through which he might have been seen.

"You're sure you can convince them, then," a different voice said.

"I'm bound to hold up my end, one way or the other." With a shudder, Boq started to turn away and put some distance between himself and the owner of the gruff voice – until it continued: "And we've seen how worthless Glinda's promises are."

Inevitably Boq paused, nearly in mid-step, and turned back to listen.

"Well now, let's not get off track. Can't say as I agree with your methods –"

"No one expected you to. Leave us to our business and we'll leave you to yours."

"Yes, yes, so long as the ends are the same."

"More or less," the gruff voice muttered. "How is it proceeding on the Munchkinland end of things?" But Boq never found out what Munchkinland had to do with anything. There was a pause, and then: "What are _you_ doing here?"

A third party spoke up in a feeble croak. "There is a sort of snag in the goings-on." There came the sound of chairs being thrown back in haste and, without thinking, Boq scrambled to the nearest entrance and waited in the shadows for them to walk past. But they must have taken a back way out of the café; he never even heard them exit. At any other time he might have felt silly for hiding like a frightened child, but the memory of his dream had not quite faded, and somehow the fragment of conversation he had just overheard only added to its cryptic significance.

Disturbed by the experience – still not quite sure why – he took longer than he might have to get home. He was watching the ground as he walked, carefully avoiding the deeper and more foul-smelling patches of mud, so lost in thought that it wasn't until he turned the last corner before home that he noticed it was far too bright for the late hour. A moment later, a blast of heat arrived with the shifting of the night breeze; it forced him to narrow his eyes to see the crowd gathered in the street in front of his building, their faces lit by a fiendish orange glow. Even before he realized what was happening, his heart sank and he stumbled a little in his haste as he broke into a run.

_Fire._ His building was burning down from the roof. The old dry wood cracked and buckled, threatening to fall in on itself – the topmost floor, shrouded in black smoke, might have already done so. It would collapse – it would send up a shower of embers and take the whole block with it, if by some miracle the sparks flying now didn't catch the nearest buildings.

At first, as he stared helplessly up at the flames, he paid little attention to the other displaced residents nearby. Could there be anyone left inside? There were enough people on the street that he could believe, for now, that they had all managed to escape; but what about the Rats who lived there? He had no idea how many there were, or if they would have anywhere to go. Inanely he thought too of the _Oziad_ he had left open at his bedside table, its pages curling and crumbling in the heat…

He became dimly aware that there was some commotion in the crowd that was not caused by the fire. Hysterical cries rose above the noise:

"Rebel Animals! This is your doing – all your fault!"

"Caught this one trying to slink away…"

"Don't let them leave! We'll see that they're punished!"

Startled, Boq turned to see who they were talking to – and leapt backwards, suppressing a cry. Hemmed in by the furious crowd, appearing more angry than frightened, a great grizzly form rose up, head and shoulders above the tallest human there. At the same time, it seemed, the Bear spotted Boq. The gaze held for a long moment. Then the Bear lowered himself to all fours and shoved his way through the throng of people, heading right for Boq. A few tried to stand in his way, but a rumbling growl and flash of teeth sent them scattering before him.

At once the conclusion he had come just shy of reaching emerged into his thoughts as if it had been there forever: the Bear assumed that Boq had something to do with the murders – perhaps even that he had committed one himself. _If you only knew how lucky you were_, the Hare had said. But he had no desire to find out.

The instinct to run was overcome – just – by a stubborn, wild, useless need to make the Bear see reason. Of course all that was necessary was to explain what had really happened. He just had to tell the Bear that he was mistaken, that they had all been mistaken. And anyway, nothing would happen here, not in front of so many people, so many witnesses. But then he was within the reach of the huge paws, and the Bear towered up again on his hind legs to stare down at him.

"You are a murderer," the Bear said.

Any protest Boq might have made died in his throat. The growled pronouncement left no room for argument, no question of veracity. The Bear raised a shaggy foreleg. By the time Boq realized what was going to happen, it was too late to escape it. He tried to throw himself backwards but on the downward swipe the paw still caught him in the chest, knocked the air from his lungs, sent him rolling over and over through the mud like a ragdoll, helpless. He hit the sidewalk hard and came to a stop, staring uncomprehendingly up at the night sky, the world still spinning around him.

Blearily he struggled to sit up, raising his head for only a moment before letting it fall again. His lungs weren't working properly, only allowing him to take shallow gasps. He knew he needed more air, but somehow it didn't feel all that urgent. _Mercy from the Unnamed God_, he thought dimly, hearing the words in his father's voice; _I'm dying_. And to think of the distracted way he had bid his family goodbye when he last left. But then, how could he have known it would be for good…?

Everything seemed so far away; the fire and the frightened screams, the dull expanding ache in his chest, the growl of frustration from just outside his field of vision as his murderer ambled closer. Perhaps he was hallucinating, too, or dreaming all of this, because he could think of no reason to be hearing her voice in the midst of the din. An almost pleasant numbness had settled down upon him. He closed his eyes.

The voice he had been ignoring cut through the haze like the crack of a whip. "I asked you to _stand down_, Oebron!"

Boq's eyes flew open again, despite the grip of darkness closing around him. He clawed his way back to consciousness by force and looked up.

Every misgiving he'd had, every resolve he'd ever made to leave crumbled to nothing in a second, because she was the most magnificent thing he had seen in all his life: standing tall with a wand firmly gripped in one hand, blue sparks arcing from the crystal at the head. From this angle he could just see her face, lit by the flames and flashing with sparks, her eyes narrowed. Glinda had placed herself between him and the Bear.

He had a vague notion to stay awake now, to thank her, but found himself staring up at the pale sky again as his vision faded before him. It had finally started to snow.


	9. Chapter 8

Note: Okay wow! I am terrible. It seems the only problem with my need to plan out a story in excruciating detail before writing it is that I end up with the entire story already existing in my head from start to finish, and actually writing it down so that other people can see it just feels like an unnecessary hassle. :P Hopefully this isn't too mind-bogglingly awful, considering how long it's been. Feel free to point out any mistakes, as always.

* * *

Boq dreaded waking up, not just this morning but on every morning for a long time now. He was _tired_. Any moment now the bell would ring for him and he would have to force himself to face the day, hurry out to see what Nessa wanted –

But that wasn't right, because not far away he heard the bleating of a goat, and wondered how he might have gotten home –

But _that_ wasn't right either, because his father hadn't kept goats for many years, not since Boq was a child. And there were other sounds further off, people passing in the hallway, calling to one another in businesslike tones – it _would_ have been just like the usual background noise of Colwen Grounds if the voices hadn't all had clipped Gillikinese accents. Where _was_ he?

It wasn't until he had drifted in and out of sleep several times that he realized he had been dreaming. Or half-dreaming, anyway. Some cloth rustled near him and when he opened his eyes he was squinting blearily at a clean white ceiling. He was dressed in a blue robe, like a hospital gown, lying in a bed – a fine one with ornate bedposts and expensive-looking sheets – and a man he didn't recognize was standing beside it, holding a glass of water.

"Hello there," the man said. "Don't be alarmed. I'm a doctor and I'm here to see how you're holding up. Don't try to move yet, please."

Boq felt miserably sluggish, heavy and lightheaded all at once, and not much inclined to try to move. The glass of water was held up to his lips, and he drank from it when coaxed to, because he was thirsty and his throat was dry as sand. The man who wore a black coat and held a silk hat to his chest solemnly while he checked Boq's pulse and listened to his breathing, and looked so much like Boq's idea of a typical city doctor that he wondered if he were dreaming again.

"All right," said the doctor, pulling up a chair beside the bed. "My name is Pentaleon. And I've been told you are Master Boq. You won't want to move much, I'll warn you first of all, because you have a few broken ribs and a set of wounds that the morphium may be hiding from you yet. And now, if you don't mind, how much do you remember about what happened?"

The mention of his injuries had jarred his memory. The moment the doctor stopped speaking, Boq gasped "_Glinda_!" and then regretted it as the sharp, sudden breath sent a convulsion of pain through his chest and nearly made him pass out again. His vision blurred and he heard himself make a pathetic noise, but he hardly cared, it hurt that much.

"Yes, you see," Pentaleon said, quite calmly, while Boq was preoccupied with trying not to cry, "sudden movements may be uncomfortable for you, as I mentioned. What else do you remember?"

Too slowly, the pain faded into a persistent, throbbing ache that filled his ribcage like sand. "The Bear," Boq managed, his eyes closed. He _really_ wished he didn't have to breathe. "And… the fire."

"Yes, yes. Good. Can you explain to me what happened that night, exactly?"

Boq described the events as best he could, somewhat haltingly, both because everything had happened so fast he wasn't entirely sure of it, and because his mind was struggling to work through the effects of the morphium. But his memory seemed to be accurate enough for Pentaleon, who nodded his way through the interview and, when Boq had finished explaining how he had seen Glinda just before losing consciousness, began writing something down on a notepad.

"What happened next?" Boq asked him.

"Hm?" Pentaleon paused in his scribbling for only a second before answering, his eyes never leaving the paper. "Well, I didn't see it myself, but by all accounts Glinda was at her most impressive. Of course she arrested the rebel Animals, and – and she saw to it that all those injured in the fire were transported safely to hospitals. The rest of the displaced people were temporarily housed in hotels, by Glinda's order. They say that she summoned a snowstorm to help snuff out the fire. As I said, I wasn't there to see it."

Boq tried to take all this in. "So this is a hospital?"

"No…" the doctor drew out, reluctantly. He put away his notepad and settled back in the chair, pulling at his graying beard. "You were brought to the Emerald Palace."

Even though he knew better now, Boq inhaled sharply in surprise and had to suffer through another wave of pain at the sudden shifting of his ribcage. "What?" he choked, when he could speak again. "Why?"

"I've been ordered not to discuss it with you."

"Glinda brought me here?"

"She is the one who ordered me not to discuss it," he said firmly. "And you shouldn't get so excited in this state, you'll do yourself harm."

"Why can't you discuss it?"

"I believe you really don't know," observed Pentaleon, uncomfortably. He shifted in his chair and stood up. "I do apologize, Master Boq, but as I value my job here, I really can't tell you. Perhaps I should leave until you've calmed down."

"Wait – is Glinda – will she see me? Can I speak with her?"

"I doubt that."

"Please, ask her. Tell her I'd like to speak with her. I'm sure – I'm sure she'll say yes. Please."

After a long, searching look, Pentaleon sighed. "I think you're mistaken, but if you'll promise not to ask me any more questions I can't answer, the next time I see her I will pass along your message."

Boq relented, as much out of exhaustion as anything, and kept quiet while Pentaleon changed his bandages. The wounds were sickening to look at – three deep uneven gashes at his right side that had been stitched up, two shallower cuts parallel to those that were healing on their own, and a ghastly bruise that spilled across the whole right side of his chest – but for now they only felt stiff and sore, numbed by the medication. He was thankful for that, even though it made him groggy and dizzy. He was thankful, too, that Pentaleon clearly knew what he was doing, because it meant Boq didn't need to worry. He replaced the bandages with minimal jostling, listened to Boq's lungs again, and showed him the makeshift bell-pull hanging just within reach of the bed. "If you need anything, ring the bell, and someone will send for me. I will be back in an hour or so to check on things, regardless," he said, and didn't seem to mind that Boq couldn't find the energy to thank him before he left.

Time passed that way until he lost track of it. Between the doctor's visits all he could do was sleep, plagued by uneasy dreams whenever he so much as closed his eyes, sometimes forgetting he had ever left home, sometimes imagining that Teneke was with him, curled up on his chest as she had so often done. Once he even thought he heard Elphaba's voice, although he couldn't make out what she was saying. As soon as he opened his eyes, the apparitions always vanished, and he was alone.

There was a knock at the door, eventually – he had no idea how long he had been here, now – and he stirred himself out of the drug-induced sleep enough to realize that the knock came from the window beyond the foot of his bed, just before it opened up and through it slipped a sleek-furred Monkey with a pair of leathery wings folded along his back.

At first, as with his initial sight of Pentaleon, Boq wondered if he might be dreaming. He recognized one of the fabled Flying Monkeys, despite never having seen any of them himself, and this one looked just as nightmarish as the stories claimed. But he watched as this nightmare nodded to him sedately and loped over to jump onto the chair beside the bed. Deciding that the embarrassment of talking to a hallucination would be preferable to being impolite to a guest, Boq gathered what remained of his wits and said, "Hello."

The Monkey, who had been poking through the pocket of his vest for something, looked up sharply. His wings were tattered and awkwardly healed in places. There were scars on his hairless face and hands, and probably elsewhere, hidden by fur. He hesitated, as if wanting to answer, but only nodded once more and handed Boq a folded slip of paper. It was a note, in handwriting he would have recognized even if it hadn't been signed by Glinda, that said _I will be there in an hour. Please be prepared to ask your questions quickly, as my time is limited._

Relief flooded through him. He had that said he was, but really he hadn't been sure at all that Glinda would consent to see him in person. After all, the last time he had seen her, she had all but thrown him out of the room. Belatedly, he realized he had no way of preparing for her visit. There was no mirror in the room, but his hair would certainly be in need of being put in order at this point, and though his spectacles had survived the Bear attack, the wire frames were somewhat bent and rested crookedly on his nose now. He could barely manage to sit up on his own, and even with help he would exhaust himself within minutes, so he would have to remain in bed even in her presence. But then, it was pointless to worry about all that, wasn't it? All he had to do was ask her a question. She wouldn't care how he looked. Or she would, but _he_ shouldn't.

"Thank you," he said to the waiting Monkey, trying to shake off his confused thoughts. "Should I – will you please tell Miss Glinda I'll be ready?"

The Monkey gave a shallow bow and bounded back to the window, glancing back once as he closed it behind him. There had been persistent rumors about Monkeys lurking in the Emerald City… But one of the Witch's own creatures in the service of the Ruler of Oz? Boq wondered if this one had perhaps defected from Elphaba's flock and gone back to the Wizard instead, or to Glinda. If that had happened, though, he would have expected to have heard about it. Perhaps he could ask Glinda about that, too.

In just a little more than an hour, Glinda strode into the room and sat down almost before he could catch his breath at the sight of her.

"Dr. Pentaleon says you're recovering well," she began straight off.

"I – I – yes," he managed, thrown off by the unexpected pleasantry.

"Is there anything you need?"

"No. Yes. I mean, I'd like – something to read?" He tried not to squirm at the way she stared persistently _down_ at him. It made all of his prepared questions scatter uselessly to the back of his mind. "And – I don't know how long it's been – I need to write home. If I could have some paper and a pen and ink…"

"No, you can't," she said tersely.

He stopped babbling. "What?"

"I'll have some books sent in, but you're not to have any contact with the outside world until after your trial."

"_What_?"

"Dr. Pentaleon said you were demanding an explanation of why you're here. You have been accused of murder and have to stay under close watch until your trial. You're not allowed to write a letter because you're not to have any contact with the outside world until after the sentencing. Dr. Pentaleon advised that you would need some time to heal, so your trial is five weeks from today. Will there be anything else?"

He gaped at her. "I didn't… I didn't do anything…"

"My Councilors and I will decide that after the trial."

"Please," he said weakly. "I just want to write to let my parents know where I am or they'll worry, you can look at the letter before I send it, I don't care –"

"Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? You're here under suspicion of _murder_. By all rights you should be in prison. I only had you placed here so that the doctor could keep an eye on you while you recovered."

"I haven't killed anyone."

"The trial is in five weeks," she repeated, all cool impatience, standing up in one smooth motion. "Stay here and stay quiet until then, if you can manage that. I don't need anything else to worry about."

Too tired and unnerved to protest further, he simply watched her go. As she slipped out, she turned just enough to allow him to get a glimpse of her face, her expression open and unguarded for only a brief moment before the door clicked shut behind her. He had never seen such helplessness in her before, and even through his shock he felt ashamed for having witnessed it. Somehow he doubted it was meant to be seen.

Later, as he lay awake with his mind racing, unable to rest despite his exhaustion, the thought surfaced again and he realized suddenly, pointlessly, what he hadn't been able to grasp yet since he had last seen her – what was different about her.

At Shiz, Galinda had always been breezily, supremely confident. There was no second-guessing; everything she did was right, or would end up that way, because _she_ was the one doing it. He had loved that about her, or admired it – envied it, he supposed. In the space of time since she had made her mysterious transformation into Glinda, she had lost that self-assurance. She questioned herself, now. That was what made her seem so different to him – so much older, so uncertain. He remembered the way she had rescued him from the Bear when he thought he was going to die, but he still found it difficult not to be hurt that she hadn't believed him.

* * *

As the days passed and he began to recover, time dragged by more and more slowly. The room was as bare as it could be, and although the doctor checked up on him regularly, the visits never lasted more than a few minutes, and while he was willing to talk about nearly anything else, he hadn't wavered in his resolve to obey Glinda's order not to answer Boq's questions. He had been here for nearly two weeks now, he found out – the first four days of which he had spent unconscious and in danger of dying. But he had too many other questions that remained unanswered.

What kind of trial was he going to have? There hadn't been any kind of real trials under the Wizard's rule, as far as he knew, and he couldn't imagine that Glinda would be waiting to pass judgment if she hadn't intended the trial to be fair… No, of course it would be a fair trial, why would he even worry about that? This was Glinda he was thinking of. And besides, she _could_ have had him thrown in prison if she hadn't cared about the justice of the thing. She had mentioned some kind of Council. Was the Bear going to be there, too? And what would they do if they found him guilty? He was not at all sure he wanted to consider that possibility.

It still hurt to move, or breathe, or think, really, but while he appreciated having the chance to relax, Boq had never found staying still for too long relaxing at all. He needed to have something to keep him busy, or he would go stir-crazy.

When the Flying Monkey returned through the window as before, he was glad for the diversion. Boq sat up in bed with an effort and tried to look sociable. "Do you have another message for me?"

The Monkey stood on the chair beside the bed, gripping the back of it with nervous fingers. He shook his head. Something about the look in his eyes reminded Boq of the Coyote kit he had found – that mute understanding without any attempt to respond.

"Did you need something?" Boq asked, confused.

After seemingly struggling for a moment, the Monkey simply nodded.

Not knowing what to make of this, Boq tried to fill the awkward silence himself. "You can – it's all right if you sit down, you know. Feel free. My name is Boq, by the way."

The Monkey, who had somewhat reluctantly accepted the invitation to sit down, leapt up in the chair again to shake Boq's outstretched hand. "Chistery," he offered.

"I – oh. It's good to meet you, Master Chistery."

"Talk," blurted Chistery, as if just remembering what he had meant to say. Or just being able to give voice to it. He seemed to have trouble speaking.

"You're just here to talk to me?" Boq asked, smiling a little at the thought. "I'm afraid I'm not very interesting."

"Talk," Chistery said.

Well, he had been looking for something to keep him busy… "Are you – are you living here in the Palace, if you don't mind me asking?"

Chistery nodded and mimed pulling a note out of his vest pocket.

"You're a messenger. But – if you don't mind – how is it that you can stay here without anyone finding out about you? I've been in the City for months and I haven't heard anything about a Flying Monkey working for Glinda."

The Monkey opened his mouth to respond, but made no sound. He clenched his fists in frustration, bared his sharp teeth and growled. It was a fearsome sight, but he was clearly angry with himself and not Boq.

"Please, don't feel like you have to answer," said Boq uneasily. "I'll stop asking questions, if you would prefer. I don't want to be rude."

Chistery sighed and settled back down, covering his face with one hand. "Talk," he said quietly, a plea this time.

"You're…" Boq began, and then paused, weighing his words. The Flying Monkeys had supposedly been transformed by the Wicked Witch, but they had been set free by her, too, and helped her at the risk of their own lives. What was this one doing _here_? "You knew Elphaba."

Far from getting offended as Boq had feared he would, Chistery only gave him a nod and a shrewd look. "Elphaba," he repeated significantly, stretching his wings.

"I knew her, too," Boq said, relieved. "We went to school together."

Chistery bowed his head as if in respect for the deceased, and Boq found himself joining him, feeling strangely subversive. In the silence that followed, from the next room over, rasped the loud and unmistakable bleating of a goat.

"Did you… did you hear that?" Boq asked faintly. To his relief, Chistery nodded, apparently unsurprised. "I – I've been hearing it since I got here – I thought I was dreaming. What could it…?" He trailed off. Chistery was frowning at him intently. He gestured to the wall between the two rooms, then to Boq, then to the door. When he realized what the Monkey was trying to say, Boq shook his head. "You – no, I'm sorry, I can't. I'm not supposed to leave."

"Leave," Chistery insisted.

"Why? What's going on?"

The Monkey pointed to the wall. "Leave! Talk!"

"I'm sorry, I am, but Glinda told me I had to stay here."

"_Please_," Chistery blurted. He reached out to tug at Boq's sleeve, almost desperately.

What else could he do? Sighing, with one hand pressing his side gingerly as he did so, Boq said, "Quickly, then." He slid out of the high bed carefully – he had walked under Pentaleon's observation already, but still felt unsteady on his feet – and followed Chistery to the door. The hallway outside was smaller than he had expected, dingy and currently empty, not like the magnificent corridors of the public areas of the Palace. He leaned against the doorframe for a moment and fought off the sinking feeling that came with realizing that he had been housed – for the second time in his life – in the servant's quarters.

But Chistery was already opening the door of the next room, and Boq didn't want to risk being seen. As quickly as he could manage, he made it inside. Before his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, he registered the smell of straw and – could he be dreaming this after all? – the sound of it crunching underfoot. Chistery led him to an armchair and brushed straw from it before holding his arm steady as he sat down to catch his breath.

"What is going on?" he muttered, half to himself. Chistery pointed, just as Boq caught sight of the creature emerging from under the table. It wasn't a goat at all. It – he – was a Goat, and Boq recognized him in spite of his disheveled appearance. He didn't look up at his visitors, browsing for food in the straw littering the floor, like a common farm animal. There was no spark of life in his eyes at all. But it _was_ Dr. Dillamond, Boq was sure of it. "What happened to him?" Boq asked, horrified, even though he knew Chistery couldn't answer him.

"Talk," said the Monkey, with a shake of his head.

"Can't… He can't talk." Understanding began to dawn. Chistery was watching him intently, waiting. "You – forgive me for saying so – you have trouble speaking. But he can't speak at all. Is it some –" _Some kind of illness_, he thought, but stopped himself from saying so. He had a feeling that calling attention to an Animal's inability to speak was probably about as rude as comparing a grown Munchkin to a child, and he didn't want to offend Chistery if he could help it. "Is it – for the same reason?"

The Monkey sighed and glanced up at Boq wearily. He had known Dr. Dillamond was here beforehand. There was a window in this room, too, and the shutters were left open. Chistery could easily come and go without being noticed.

"Cage," rasped Chistery, quietly, without looking up again. He cupped his hands and slowly pressed them together, harder and harder, until his palms were flat against one another. Then he touched his fingertips to his throat. Quieted by force. Even without knowing what had happened, Boq had to shudder.

But Chistery shook himself and went to lead the indifferent Dr. Dillamond to Boq's chair. "Talk," the Monkey invited.

"Hello, Dr. Dillamond," Boq said hesitantly. He did not think that the Goat was in any shape to listen, but he felt he owed his former professor at least this courtesy, even if his mind had gone.

Dr. Dillamond bleated without comprehension and turned away to graze under the table again. It was awful to see him brought so low. Growing increasingly sore from exertion, Boq leaned back in the armchair – more straw fell from the back of it, onto his shoulders, into his hair – and tried to think.

"Why did you want to talk to me, Master Chistery?"

"Help." The Monkey jumped up to sit on the arm of the chair. He touched his throat a second time. "Help. Talk." He indicated himself, confidently, and then, in a gesture that looked much less certain, pointed to Dr. Dillamond.

"But why can't you talk to anyone else? I don't think you would be allowed to visit me if Glinda knew, and I'm not supposed to be here at all. Why can't you talk to Glinda?"

"Glinda!" With a snort of what seemed to be disgust, Chistery shook his head. He pushed Boq's shoulder gently and said, "Help."

Glinda was busy. She had reminded him of that more than once already. Perhaps she wasn't able to set aside enough time to have stilted conversations with the Animals under her roof, any more than she was able to speak civilly to the old acquaintance she had stowed away in a room meant for a servant. He was unaccustomed to the stirring of resentment against her, and not at all comfortable with it. But suddenly he did not care quite so much about disobeying her orders. This was only one room away from his, after all, and if he visited for short periods, during the evening, he could avoid being found out. It wouldn't interfere with his trial at all.

"I'll help you both however I can," Boq said.


	10. Chapter 9

In the middle of the night, Boq would listen at the door to make sure no one was passing by in the hallway, then dart over to join Chistery and Dr. Dillamond in the room next to his. It was an effort to stay for long, as sore and tired as he was, but it did him good to try, he thought. At least he was doing something other than sleeping.

It was awkward, at first, to do what amounted to talking to himself, since neither of the Animals could join the conversation. He sat in the straw-covered armchair, while Dr. Dillamond grazed around his feet and Chistery sat attentively on the edge of the table, and wracked his brain to come up with any subject that might not bore them to death. Stories about his childhood probably didn't qualify, but he told them anyway, because he was homesick and needed to hear them himself. When descriptions of the genetics of rabbit coat colors and the differences between two-row and six-row barley and how best to manage an infestation of aphids ran out, he began reciting from memory things he had read. By the third day, Chistery was chiming in on occasion, in his odd manner – suddenly repeating something Boq had just said, as if he had been trying to think of that very word all evening and had only just been reminded of it.

"And then I think the Arjiki were the ones to propose a truce," Boq was saying, having come to the end of a half-remembered book about the political history of the Vinkus.

"Truce," said Chistery, nodding.

"Or it might have been the Yunamata, I'm not – no, it was the Yunamata, I've just remembered. They proposed the truce, and that's why they have the – wait, that's not it." The Arjiki was the tribe that had the best rapport with the rest of Oz, so they must have been the ones who organized the truce, because that was what started their unofficial alliance with the Emerald City, wasn't it? But then he had been sure the book said it was the Yunamata…

When he looked up, he met the eyes of Dr. Dillamond, who had stopped grazing to stare at him – really _at_ him, not just in his direction. It was as if he had really _noticed_ Boq for the first time. As soon as it began, the moment ended; the Goat blinked and went back under the table to take a nap. But Chistery was grinning, and Boq had to do the same. He couldn't help but get the impression that his former professor had just felt the stirring of an impulse to correct him on his misremembered history.

* * *

Without anything to occupy his days, however, Boq made a habit of dragging the room's only chair to the window to sit and watch the activity in the broad courtyard below. A garden with winding paths, flower beds and neatly cultivated hedges sprawled across much of it, and the stables were just visible on the outskirts of his range of vision. Even the grooms here were richly dressed. Boq's old clothes had been returned to him, so that he could finally change out of his hospital robe. They had been cleaned, and the places torn by the Bear's claws mended as discreetly as possible, but they were much the worse for wear, and he had no way of replacing them.

He had not expected to see Glinda again before the trial, but one afternoon, while he sat at the window, there was a knock on the door, and she entered his room with an armful of dusty old books. She dropped them on the table with a resounding _thud_.

"Oh," he said, surprised that she had remembered his request for something to read. He had forgotten it, himself. "Thank you."

Standing with her back to him, she nodded. "You're welcome." She made no move to leave, and he began to get nervous. Why hadn't she sent someone else with the books, anyway? She might have found out about him leaving his room.

Finally, she turned around. "You told me that you saw Elphaba before she died."

Boq nearly squirmed. "I did."

"What was she doing? What did she say?"

The last time they'd had this conversation, Glinda had not reacted well. Besides, he hardly wanted her to know how _she_ had figured into the events of that day. He feared that he would once again say the opposite of whatever she wanted to hear, but she kept an expectant gaze on him, pressuring him to speak. "She was… there to see her sister, I think." Steadying himself with one hand on the windowsill, he stood up, and started to drag the chair over to her.

"Don't do that," she said stiffly. She marched over and took the chair from him, placing it back in its usual spot beside the bed and sitting down. "You're not even supposed to be walking around, are you?"

"The doctor said I should get as much exercise as I'm comfortable with."

"Well, don't overdo it."

Briefly he was thrilled by her interest in his health, halfhearted as it may have been, but then he remembered he was supposed to be upset with her. Still, when faced with the prospect of climbing up onto the high bed to sit – since there was no other chair – he opted to remain standing and lean against it instead, rather than let her see him struggle. No need to lose any more dignity than he had already.

"You were saying?" she prompted.

"Right. It's been a while, though, and I don't know how much there is to tell. I think she was there to visit her sister. She was going to come here when she left, I think. And she worked some sort of a spell that let her – let Nessa walk."

Glinda sat in rapt, almost desperate attention. "Did she?"

"Yes, it was – well, it was impressive." He didn't like to think about it, actually. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to think of another innocuous detail to offer. "And then – Elphaba – I left before she did. But she said she meant to see you. And… that's all."

"That's _all_?"

"It was not a lengthy visit." Or a particularly pleasant one. But her lack of negative response made him relax somewhat. "I had thought that you didn't like to talk about Elphaba anymore."

The spell was broken. She drew back, distancing herself rather pointedly, he thought. "Why would you say that?"

He searched for the best way to phrase it. "Because – when you came back from seeing the Wizard – after Elphaba left, and everyone was talking about it, how wicked it was, what she had done – you never defended her. And you were the one person I'd have expected to do it. I always thought you must have been very angry with her."

She listened without interruption. When he finished, she let the silence drag on just long enough to make it significant, and then asked, "What exactly were you doing at Colwen Grounds, Boq?"

Was he imagining it, or had she purposefully given an extra coldness to the words? Either way, the suspicion implicit in the question put him on edge. He felt his expression clear, going carefully blank as he had learned to do as a servant. "I did whatever the Governor needed me to do."

"You're referring to Nessa."

_She _was_ the Governor of Munchkinland, yes_, he thought grimly. "Of course."

"And what did she need you to do?"

"Things – fetching things for her, and – there were restrictions on travel. Munchkinland was occupied by Guards. I wasn't able to leave. And – why did Nessa write to you in the first place?" asked Boq, grasping for a change of subject, addressing the opposite wall instead of Glinda. He wished he hadn't been too proud to climb up to sit on the bed. "She didn't – approve of you. And she always suspected you had something to do with Elphaba leaving, or felt that you hadn't done enough to make her stay."

Glinda was subdued for a long moment. Perhaps she hadn't known.

"I suppose," she said finally, "that she must have been more concerned with keeping a close contact with the Wizard."

The words suddenly sharpened his focus. "_Were_ you?"

"What?"

"A close contact to the Wizard."

"I – yes, I was."

"If you were that close to the Wizard – didn't you know about what was going on? The Wizard sent Guards because the – because Nessa sent for them. She was paranoid, had no real attachment to her country. A terrible Governor. No one could travel without her express permission. Even if they had that, they risked being harassed by Guards. It was egregious, it was – it was _cruel_."

Glinda's eyes narrowed at him. It was not his imagination – her tone was deliberately icy. "Nessa claimed that Guards were needed because there was a threat of a violent uprising against her."

He snorted. "She _claimed_! There wasn't any such thing, unless it came about after she took away our rights and invited soldiers into our homes."

"Is that true?"

"Of course!"

There was a pause. As if making a new attempt to be civil, Glinda offered, "I was not aware that things had escalated to that level. Even the Wizard didn't know that."

_The Wizard hadn't known._

Boq was momentarily stricken with horror, wishing it was a little easier to breathe. He had always thought that the Wizard must have simply been responding to the request of the Governor, siding with her over her people. He could understand that, and expect it – kings only want to take advice from kings.

But for the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard whose decisions had always been justified even if unjust, to occupy his throne in the Emerald City and send soldiers to Munchkinland by request without even _knowing why_ – and worse, for Glinda the Good to sit blithely by him the whole time? Everything that had happened to Munchkinland, to his family, to him, had been so sickeningly _needless_. He stammered with growing indignation, "You say that like it's… He should have known, _you_ should have known! _Someone_ should have known. I was – she wouldn't let me go – and you didn't even _care_ –!"

He certainly hadn't meant to make it that personal, but he hardly knew what he was saying. Even Glinda seemed genuinely taken aback. "You – your well-being is hardly my responsibility!"

"Then why did you bother saving me at all?" he demanded, louder than he'd intended.

"Saving you…? Why _wouldn't_ I?"

"Right," he said, fuming. "It would look very bad for you if I had died, wouldn't it?"

Glinda was speechless for all of a second, before snapping, "I'm sorry if you feel I wasn't enthusiastic enough about having saved your life."

"You were enthusiastic enough about having me locked up here!" He _should_ have tried to calm down, but he didn't care anymore. "I didn't ask for any of this to happen. I was going to leave; I was done with this blighted city! And I didn't do anything _wrong_, but you're still treating me like a criminal and you won't even tell me why!"

Promptly and neatly she diverted the argument again, this time making no effort to conceal her suspicion. "You and Nessa were constantly together in school, and then you turned up at Colwen Grounds. Nessarose all but told me that you were in love with her, and I know for a fact that she loved you. What were you doing with her, then, if you didn't love her?"

"I didn't _turn up_ there. When Nessa found out that her father was dying, she needed someone to escort her home. Since you were too busy to notice or care, I had to be the one to do it. After her father died – she simply wouldn't allow me to leave."

"Listen to you! You _had_ to be the one to do it? So you never loved her at all, then!"

"I never told her I loved her!" he protested.

Glinda seemed to grow in anger, drawing herself up, glowering. "So you tricked her and misled her, but as long as you didn't explicitly lie, it's all right? Is that what you're saying?"

"I did not trick her! I tried to help her. That's what she needed!"

"How do you know what she _needed_? Maybe she needed you to love her."

"What was I supposed to do about that?" he said, turning more defensive by the second. "I _didn't_ love her, that's all! She knew it. Anyone else would have accepted that and moved on."

"_Anyone_ else, Boq?" Glinda asked, with the ghost of a sneer.

No matter how angry he was now, no matter that he had convinced himself to give up on her – he felt like he had been kicked. He had let himself believe she hadn't known, or had forgotten. But she knew, and it _hurt_, as she must have known it would have. He fought to find his conviction again. "I – I did more for her than anyone else bothered to do. You could have helped her, Fiyero could have – everyone else just left her alone, even her own sister!"

"_Oh_!" Furious, Glinda actually got to her feet, her fists clenched as though she might be thinking of hitting him. "You – do you expect to be praised? For leading an innocent girl into believing you loved her, and then resenting her for wanting you around? Are you that desperate for attention?"

"I didn't –"

"And even if you didn't lie, you tricked her! You let it go on and on when you could have just told her the truth!"

"No! I was trying not to – it would have hurt her. I didn't want to hurt her."

She threw her arms out in sarcastic celebration. "Well, that's it, then, you're a hero! I'll have a medal made up for you right away."

"Please –"

She cut him off again. "Or would you rather be sainted instead? I could probably arrange that, too."

"That's not – please, you're not listening to me."

"Well, go on!"

"She needed someone!" he said weakly. "I just – I wanted to help her. She needed help and no one else was going to do it She would have been alone." He felt lightheaded with the long exertion, and had to stumble to the empty chair to sit down. "Was it – was I wrong? I don't know what else I could have done. I thought I was doing the right thing. What else could I have done?"

He leaned back in the chair, struggling to catch his breath, one hand over his sore ribs. Hopelessly, he looked up to Glinda for an answer, but disgust was apparent in every line of her face. Without another word, she left him to his thoughts.


End file.
